Sovereignty inside the States

Résumé du document

This document is based on Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat's article: Sovereign Bodies. Sovereignty is often described as the link between a state and its territory. If we refer to the definition of philosophy given by the Stanford Encyclopedia, we will discover that sovereignty is a "supreme authority within a territory?. However, according to the article written by Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat we see that even if the link between state sovereignty and territory remain one of the pillars of the modern states, this link can be challenged. What was interesting in this article was the attempt to give a modern and dynamic definition of sovereignty, and of what is implied by the definition of a State as a sovereign entity. I will try to underline how the process of sovereignty is also an involvement of the society on which the sovereignty is exercised and not only from the recognition given by other sovereign states.

Extraits

[...] The sovereignty is often described as the link between a state and the territory of this state. If we refer to the definition given by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of philosophy we can find that sovereignty is a ‘‘supreme authority within a territory''. But, according to the article written by Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat we can see that even if the link between sovereignty state and territory remains one of the pillars of the modern states, this link can be challenged. [...]

[...] This is representative of the conception of sovereignty before the modern age. But it's also representative of one of the core elements of sovereignty: the violence and the necessary representation of this violence However, those forms of public spectacles were a bit risky given the fact that sometimes the public had some sympathy and some compassion for the criminals. Sometimes there were even some riots against the executioner whereas the aim of the execution was to control the population. Those difficulties leaded to a new form of practices used by authorities in order to achieve the difficult aim (even impossible) to control people once and for all. [...]

[...] To understand better sovereignty it's useful to study a State that has lost its sovereign power. It underlines that to keep its power, a sovereign state needs not only to control but also to forge consent. So, we see once again that the process of sovereignty is a social process and not only based on a territory but also on a society and bodies that can react and oppose to this sovereignty. To put it in a nutshell, with this article we change our way to look at sovereignty. [...]

[...] Those bodies respect the rules because they feel a latent threat to be punished. That period is also a period of deep modifications for the conception of sovereignty given the fact that the possession of sovereignty shift from the sovereign ruler to the nation and its people. Those changes leaded to a conception of popular sovereignty based on the people as illustrated by the French and the American Revolution. Then people became citizens and that leaded to the concept of national sovereignty. [...]

[...] How sovereignty is exercised and on what is it based? The sovereign power need to be seen as stable and natural by the citizens if the State doesn't want to loose its superiority. This is demonstrated thanks to the number of actions used by the authority to do so. For example every form of sovereignty faces some challengers. It is then necessary for the States to defeat them with violence in order to affirm their superiority and to show what happens to those that challenge the sovereign power. [...]