A Puzzle of Sovereignity :: Government Politics Essays

A Puzzle of SovereignityABSTRACT National sovereignty presents a puzzle. On the cardinal hand, this notion continues to figure importantly in our descriptions of global political change. On the other hand, factors such as the accelerating pace of inter guinea pig economic integration seem to have made the notion anachronistic. This newspaper publisher is an attempt to resolve this puzzle. Distinguishing between internal sovereignty or supremacy and external sovereignty or independence, I investigate whether some insights from the discussion of the originator can be applied to our puzzle concerning the latter. One answer to the objection that the notion of internal sovereignty is inapplicable because no group in union holds unlimited political power is to distinguish between different types of internal sovereignty, such as legal and electoral sovereignty. The resolution of the puzzle lies in applying this response strategy to the objection that the notion of external sovereignty is inapplicable because no state is completely independent.The subject of national sovereignty presents a puzzle. On the one hand, the notion of the sovereignty of the state figures importantly in our descriptions of, and our prescriptions for, global political change. (1) For example, a natural characterization of the political changes in Eastern Europe and key Asia preceding and following the demise of the Soviet Union is that a number of national political communities have vigorously asserted, sometimes by force of arms, claims to national sovereignty. Against this is the claim that, as a result of the contemporary realities of global affairs, national sovereignty has become irrelevant, an anachronistic notion. According to this view, there is a variety of factors which, particularly in the past several decades, have drained states of their sovereignty by depriving them of the ability to protect themselves and their citizens from the negative effects of the actions of other sta tes or outside groups. The or so important of these factors are the accelerating pace of global economic integration and the increasingly wide-spread and detrimental human impact on the environment.While states have attempted to serve to this threat to their sovereignty by entering into mutual agreements in an attempt to mitigate or control the negative pressures from outside of their borders, the agreements themselves seem to represent a loss of sovereignty. Because they involve the states binding themselves in various ways, and hence partially losing control of their own future actions, international agreements appear to exchange one clay of constraint for another.