A Genealogy of State Sovereignty
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Lorenzo Zucca
Abstract
A genealogical account of state sovereignty explores the ways in which the concept has emerged, evolved, and is in decline today. Sovereignty has a theological foundation, and is deeply bound up with the idea of God, in particular a voluntarist God, presented as being capable of intervening directly in the world. Religious conflicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forced the separation between religion and politics, and opened the space for the emergence of a national state endowed with sovereignty which has dominated the world until now. Today’s rise of international and transnational obligations challenges the conventional understanding of state sovereignty, which cannot account for the normative density of the global order and the corresponding decline of state-based political authority. In order to explain that, I contrast two competing understandings of state sovereignty: a static one and a dynamic one. The static understanding regards sovereignty as absolute within the state territory. The dynamic understanding regards sovereignty as evolutionary: according to this account, the state is just one possible form that sovereignty can take. I conclude by suggesting that the dynamic understanding of state sovereignty is better suited to explaining the decline of state sovereignty.
© 2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Sovereignty and Natural Law in the Legal Discourse of the Ancien Régime
- Kelsen, Heller and Schmitt: Paradigms of Sovereignty Thought
- On Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Solidarity Or: How Can a Solidaristic Idea of Legitimate Sovereignty Be Justified?
- A Genealogy of State Sovereignty
- Early Modern Sovereignty and Its Limits
- Sovereign Trusteeship and Empire
- Three Grotian Theories of Humanitarian Intervention
- Sovereignty as Trusteeship and Indigenous Peoples
- The Paradoxes of Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity: Concluding Remarks
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Sovereignty and Natural Law in the Legal Discourse of the Ancien Régime
- Kelsen, Heller and Schmitt: Paradigms of Sovereignty Thought
- On Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Solidarity Or: How Can a Solidaristic Idea of Legitimate Sovereignty Be Justified?
- A Genealogy of State Sovereignty
- Early Modern Sovereignty and Its Limits
- Sovereign Trusteeship and Empire
- Three Grotian Theories of Humanitarian Intervention
- Sovereignty as Trusteeship and Indigenous Peoples
- The Paradoxes of Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity: Concluding Remarks
