Month: January 2023

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the French contractualist, is regarded to have contributed to the concept of sovereignty by formulating his doctrine of General Will. The doctrine of General Will, along with Rousseau’s revolt against reason, romanticized and rediscovered the community in contrast to atomic individualism. The General Will grounded in the community became the basis of… Continue reading Jean Jacques Rousseau

John Locke (1632–1704), an English thinker and social contractualist, is not identified with the theory of absolute sovereignty. His understanding of the social contract and the state of nature led Locke to formulate a theory of sovereignty which was different from that of Hobbes. In his Two Treatises of Government (1690) he formulated his theory of social contract… Continue reading John Locke

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) is considered to be the theorist of ‘absolute sovereignty’. He grounded the nature and powers of the sovereign on the necessities entailed by the state of nature. His argued that the state of nature and the formulation of the instinct of self-preservation in individuals led to the origin of the State. Uncertainty… Continue reading Thomas Hobbes

Discussions of the three writers mentioned previously suggest that during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (in Europe), the concept of sovereignty had been discussed in three forms, namely, national sovereignty (Bodin), popular sovereignty (Althusius) and external sovereignty (Grotius). Furthermore, we find that the concept of natural law played important role both in terms of… Continue reading Contractualists and the Concept of Sovereignty

While Bodin propounded the concept of national sovereignty, Hugo Grotius (1583–1643), a Dutch jurist, laid the foundation of international or external sovereignty. He is described as the father of international law. As mentioned previously, external sovereignty invokes international law to support the sovereign equality of states and the right of the State to exist independently… Continue reading Hugo Grotius

Johannes Althusius, a seventeenth century French Calvinist, contributed to the concept of sovereignty by treating it as a defining element of the State. It may be mentioned that in early seventeenth-century France, Calvinists discussed anti-royalist theories and stressed the secular and human origins of government. Ironically, this was to lead to the Divine Right of… Continue reading Johannes Althusius

Jean Bodin Jean Bodin, a sixteenth-century French writer, in Six Books on the Republic (1576) gave a systematic treatment of the nature and characteristics of sovereignty. According to Sabine, ‘this book also was occasioned by the civil wars and was written with the avowed purpose of strengthening the king’. He further opines that the ‘importance of the… Continue reading Rationalization of Natural Law and the Concept of Sovereignty

The dictionary traces the meaning of ‘sovereignty’ from the Latin word superanus connoting super, i.e., English ‘above’ or ‘sovereign’ or French souverein.1 This means that sovereignty stands for something that is above, super or supreme. As our survey of the development of the concept of sovereignty will suggest, it has been formulated in the specific context of the State and constitutes… Continue reading Introduction