Sovereignty refers to a government’s ability to enforce laws over its territory, but there is no well-accepted definition. Legal and effective sovereignty differ, and the concept has been debated since Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Enlightenment thinkers rejected suzerainty and advocated for citizens’ rule. Legal sovereignty is a theoretical claim, while effective sovereignty is the degree of control over subjects. The PRC and ROC claimed legal sovereignty over mainland China and Taiwan, respectively, but their actual sovereignty differed. Recognition of sovereignty is important in international relations and can cause controversy.
There is no single criterion that makes a country sovereign, but sovereignty in the modern world usually refers to a government’s ability to enforce the laws over its territory. The concept of sovereignty has been debated over the centuries and no well-accepted definition has emerged since then. There is a difference between legal and effective sovereignty, but governments that are able to effectively enforce laws typically claim to be sovereign and are recognized as sovereign by foreign countries.
The concept of sovereignty is commonly associated with Thomas Hobbes, a 15th century English philosopher. In his 15th book Leviathan, Hobbes advocates a form of exclusive and absolute monarchy to remove human beings from the state of nature. Without a sovereign authority to govern a population, people’s lives would be “ugly, brutish, and short.” Leviathan has been the subject of much controversy over the years, but is considered one of the founding works of social contract theory.
During the Age of Enlightenment, reason, rather than heredity, was advocated as the legitimate basis of sovereign authority. Previous centuries were generally characterized by the suzerainty of religious institutions or ruling aristocracies, and this was rejected by Enlightenment thinkers. The French and American revolutions of the late 1700s both sought to establish sovereign rule by the citizens themselves.
There are two different senses of sovereignty, legal and real. Legal sovereignty refers to the theoretical claim of a governing body to rule over its subjects. These rules are typically codified in a set of laws. Effective sovereignty, on the other hand, is the degree to which a governing body is actually able to control its subjects. If people generally do not follow an authority that claims to be sovereign, there is little actual sovereignty.
Legal versus actual sovereignty can be illustrated in the case of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China. Around 1990, both governing bodies claimed legal sovereignty over mainland China and the island of Taiwan. In practice, the PRC exercised real control only over mainland China and the ROC controlled only Taiwan. These two governing bodies had the same legal sovereignty, but their actual sovereignty differed.
This question of sovereignty is also important in international relations. Governments wishing to establish diplomatic relations with other nations must first decide which governing body to recognize as sovereign. In many cases, there may be just one obvious choice. In the case of the PRC and the ROC, however, this may not be an easy decision. Recognizing, or refusing to recognize, the sovereignty of a governing body is a common cause of international controversy.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
