Comment: Rethinking on sovereign state. (2000, 20 Marks)
The classical sovereign state, theorised by Jean Bodin (Six Books of the Commonwealth, 1576), Thomas Hobbes and John Austin and institutionalised at Westphalia (1648), claimed authority that was supreme, territorial, exclusive and indivisible. Rethinking it means asking whether sovereignty is a fixed absolute or a variable bundle of authorities, which can be divided, pooled, conditioned and reasserted.
Why the classical model was questioned
- From within: the pluralists Harold J. Laski and R. M. MacIver showed that law has many sources and that federalism divides sovereignty by design.
- From without: capital mobility, supranational institutions, the human-rights regime and problems no border contains, such as climate change, pandemics and cyber threats. On 23 July 2025 the ICJ’s unanimous advisory opinion described climate obligations as owed to the international community as a whole.
Four reconceptualisations
1. Disaggregated sovereignty. Stephen D. Krasner (Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, 1999) separates domestic, interdependence, international legal and Westphalian sovereignty, and shows the absolute version was always a norm more invoked than practised. Globalisation mainly erodes control over cross-border flows. Legal recognition is intact, since the number of recognised states has grown.
2. Pooled and relational sovereignty. In the European Union states exercise authority jointly through qualified-majority voting. Robert O. Keohane treats sovereignty as a bargaining resource rather than a territorial wall, and Abram and Antonia Handler Chayes (The New Sovereignty, 1995) define it as status: membership in the regimes that govern international life. Ceding a competence by treaty is itself a sovereign act.
3. Sovereignty as responsibility. Francis M. Deng and colleagues (1996) argued that sovereignty is earned by protecting one’s population. Kofi Annan’s “two concepts of sovereignty” (1999) set individual sovereignty beside state sovereignty. The ICISS report (2001) led to the Responsibility to Protect, endorsed at the 2005 World Summit (paragraphs 138–139). Sovereignty becomes conditional, not merely a shield.
4. Post-Westphalian and popular sovereignty. David Held’s cosmopolitan democracy would extend accountability to transnational institutions. Legitimacy, meanwhile, increasingly rests on the people rather than the ruler.
The counter-trend: sovereignty reasserted
- States are re-territorialising authority through data sovereignty (the EU’s GDPR; India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023), export controls, investment screening, tariffs and stricter migration regimes. Brexit’s slogan “take back control” is the purest assertion.
- Pooling holds among equals and bends before a hegemon. In January 2026 the OECD global minimum tax was diluted to accommodate US-headquartered groups.
Critical appraisal
- Realists answer that sovereignty never meant freedom from constraint. Kenneth N. Waltz defines it as a state deciding “for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems” (Theory of International Politics, 1979).
- Post-colonial and Global South critics warn that conditional sovereignty licenses selective intervention; Mohammed Ayoob (2002) argues that for late-forming states sovereignty remains the chief shield against stronger powers. The 2011 Libya intervention, on which India abstained, turned civilian protection into regime change, and Brazil’s “responsibility while protecting” proposal followed.
- India’s position illustrates the balance: a firm defence of non-intervention and strategic autonomy, non-membership of the Rome Statute, and data localisation, alongside pooled commitments at the WTO and under the Paris Agreement and pooled fiscal authority in the GST Council at home.
Conclusion
The sovereign state has been redefined, not retired. Sovereignty is moving from an absolute, indivisible attribute to a relational, layered and partly conditional status. The state still decides how much to share, and it still holds the coercive authority and legitimacy no other actor possesses. The live question is no longer whether states are sovereign, but on whose terms sovereignty is shared.