Author: Haroon Khalil
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Hugo Grotius
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…
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Johannes Althusius
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…
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Rationalization of Natural Law and the Concept of Sovereignty
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…
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Introduction
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…
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Neo-Marxian Perspective
Marx has hinted at the possibility of the State becoming relative autonomous of the social relations and the base or the infrastructure. If so, then the State also becomes an arena where revolutionary potential or possibilities could be found. Instead of the base only catapulting revolutionary change, the superstructure can also become a means to bring…
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Critical Evaluation of the Orthodox Marxian Theory
This in brief is the orthodox Marxian position on the role and nature of the State both in its oppressive form and after it being taken over by the proletariat. However, a variety of developments have brought this thesis into doubt. It is said that the State is neither exploitative in the capitalist economy nor did…
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’Withering Away’ of the State
The State does not lead to its abolition right away. The revolution of the proletariat instead of abolishing the State, as an anarchist suggests, results in it being taken over. Lenin, citing Engels, says, ‘the proletariat seizes state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with.’92 The state now is in the hands…
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State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class
We have discussed Engels’s view on the origin and nature of the state earlier. Engels in his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State treats the State as a product of irreconcilable class differences arising out of emergence of private property at a particular stage in historical evolution. The State as a public power is there…
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Base-Superstructure relationship
As Andrew Vincent remarks, Marxian theory tends towards political economy and treats the economic activity as the primary concern. The rest of the human activity is taken as part of epiphenomenona or result of certain antecedent conditions.89 Accordingly, central to the Marxian understanding of society is the differentiation between infrastructure or base and superstructure. Marxian theory gives primacy to the economic structure…
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Two Accounts of the Class-State Relationship
State as executive committee of the dominant class From the writings of Marx, two streams or accounts of class-state relationship emerge: (i) Communist manifesto’s executive committee view and (ii) Eighteenth Brumaire’s relative autonomy view. The first conceives the state as dependent on society/class relations and the second with a degree of autonomy from classes in society. The first view…