Westphalian sovereignty

Westphalian sovereignty, or state sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory.

Quotes

• Free trade has a tendency to gradually undermine national sovereignty.
  • Jason Hickel, The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions, 2018, p. 218

• The pandemic has demonstrated the bankruptcy of national sovereignty. The major threats to humanity are global in character, so mutual aid, cooperation and solidarity must be too.
  • Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot, The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons (March 28, 2020), ROAR Magazine

• Like a dystopia made real, the current situation provides us with a glimpse of what soon awaits humanity if global economic and political structures are unable to radically and rapidly transform in order to confront the climate change crisis. First observation: around the world, we are all willing to rely on the sovereign power of the nation state to respond to this global epidemic in two more or less complimentary ways: on the one hand, we count on the state to enact authoritarian measures to limit personal contact, largely by establishing "states of emergency" (whether officially declared or not) as in Italy, Spain, France and elsewhere. On the other hand, we expect the state to protect citizens by preventing the virus being "imported" from abroad. Social discipline and national protectionism are thus the two primary weapons deployed in our fight against the pandemic. Here, we see the two faces of state sovereignty: internal domination and external independence.
  • Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot, The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons (March 28, 2020), ROAR Magazine

• The figure of the sovereign state now manifests itself in its most extreme but also its most classic form: that of the sword that strikes the enemy, "who is there, invisible, elusive and advancing."
  • Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot, The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons (March 28, 2020), ROAR Magazine

• Is it so obvious that the notion of the public service is in fact aligned with the concept of state sovereignty? Does the former depend on the latter? Is the public service indissolubly linked to state sovereignty? This question deserves particularly careful consideration because it is one of the central arguments deployed by the proponents of state sovereignty. Let us begin by examining the very nature of state sovereignty. Etymologically, sovereignty means "superiority" (from the Latin superanus), but superiority in regard to what? In brief, it is superiority in regard to any laws or obligations that threaten to limit the power of the state, both in its relation to other states and in relation to its own citizens. The sovereign state places itself above any commitments or obligations, which it is then free to constrict or revoke as it pleases. But as a public figure, the state can only act through its representatives, who are all supposed to embody the continuity of the state over and above the daily exercise of their specific governmental functions. The superiority of the state therefore effectively means the superiority of its representatives over the laws or obligations that impinge upon them. This is the notion of superiority that is elevated to the rank of principle by all sovereigntists. But however unpleasant it may sound, this principle applies regardless of the political orientation of its leaders: what is essential is merely that one acts as a representative of the state, regardless of one’s particular beliefs about state sovereignty. All the concessions that were successively granted to the EU by the representatives of the French state were acts of sovereignty — for the very construction of the EU, from the beginning, was based on the implementation of the principle of state sovereignty.
  • Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot, The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons (March 28, 2020), ROAR Magazine

• Similarly, the fact that the French state, like so many other European states, has consistently evaded its international obligations regarding the defense of human rights is also part of the logic of sovereignty: the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (1998) obliges signatory states to create a safe and healthy environment for human rights defenders. However, the laws and practices of signatory states, and in particular French laws and practices regarding the border it shares with Italy, violates its international obligations. The very same can of course be said with respect to climate change obligations, which states happily ignore based on their particular interests at any given time. And in matters of internal public law, state sovereignty reigns supreme there as well. To stick to the case of France, the rights of Amerindians in Guyana are routinely denied in the name of the principle of the "One and Indivisible Republic" — an expression that, once again, references the sacrosanct principle of state sovereignty. Ultimately, expressions such as these are little more than alibis that allow state representatives to exempt themselves from any obligation that might legitimate citizen control over the state.
  • Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot, The pandemic as political trial: the case for a global commons (March 28, 2020), ROAR Magazine

• Germany would be a desert covered with the skeletons of Catholics, Evangelicals, Reformers and Anabaptists who had massacred each other if the peace of Westphalia had not eventually secured freedom of conscience for its inhabitants.
  • Voltaire (1763). Treatise on Toleration. Penguin Books Limited. pp. 50–. ISBN 978-0-241-23663-5. 

See also

• International relations
• Nationalism
• Sovereignty

External links

Authority control: WorldCat search