Political pluralism often invokes the dynamics of power and authority in its critiques of monist theory of sovereignty. Legally, sovereignty has been accepted as bestowing the supreme law-making power to the State. However, whether by virtue of this legal supremacy, sovereignty also subsumes supreme political power or authority. If yes, then what are its manifestations? Where is legitimacy of sovereignty drawn from?
If we look at the definitions of sovereignty given by Jean Bodin (sovereignty as supreme power), Hugo Grotius (sovereignty as supreme political power), Thomas Hobbes (all powerful commonwealth with surrender of all natural rights by individuals), John Austin (determinate human superior with power to command) and some of the other commentators like Sir William Blackstone (sovereignty as supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority), Sir F. Pollock (sovereignty as that power which is neither temporary nor delegated), J. W. Burgess (Sovereignty as original, absolute and unlimited power), and others, all have identified power or authority with sovereignty. As such, sovereignty is identified as power or authority of the State over individuals and other groups. Here power is understood in terms of coercive means available to the State due to sovereignty. On the other hand, in a liberal framework authority would depend on legitimacy of state policies and actions. As such, legitimate power, i.e., authority and not power alone is required to sustain sovereignty. For advocates of traditional concept of sovereignty, legitimacy inheres in sovereignty itself. For Hobbes, for example, all powers of the sovereign are legitimate as they are derived from the individuals surrendering their natural rights, which is in the best interests of all. For Austin, a determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience from the bulk of society means that the sovereign can put compulsion on the members of the society if this habitual obedience is not available. We can infer that sovereignty is understood as a self-contained theory of power. In contrast, however, a liberal view would maintain that claim of sovereignty is due to its authority and not naked power. We will see how the pluralist view takes up the concept of authority to challenge the concept of sovereignty and also to argue for dispersal of power amongst different groups.
However, pluralists like Laski who prefer the term authority to sovereignty as characteristics of the State, hold that authority would emerge due to consent and a decentralized decision-making process and not due to the command of a single individual. Further, allegiance to the State is in proportion to the public service it provides. Similarly, for MacIver sovereignty should not be understood in terms of power. This is because ‘will’ on the part of citizens to obey law and not the coercive power of the State is the root of obedience. Further, as sovereignty is limited in proportion to the service to society, then legitimacy would be dependent on service provided. Thus, both Laski and MacIver seek to understand the State and its authority in terms of legitimacy of its purpose and nature of authority and not sovereignty as power.
It is generally observed that the State enjoys regulatory and coercive power and also receives willing compliance from the people. Out of the four elements of the State, it is not difficult to locate which element enables the State such a position. Sovereignty provides a general framework, which gives willing compliance from the constituents to the actions and orders of the State. However, we have a dilemma here. What means does the State have to express its sovereign power? If this means is government, then the actual operation and expression of sovereignty will be dependent on the legitimacy and nature of the government the State has. As such, though sovereignty inheres in all its absoluteness in the State as an institution, its actual expression may vary over a period of time in the State. This could be due to the changing nature and scope of government that exists. The discussion in relating to political versus legal sovereignty and de jure versus de facto sovereignty gives us some clue as to how actual expression of sovereignty in its legal sense gets restricted. For example, if sovereignty is an immutable and a constant attribute of the State, the German state under Adolph Hitler or Italian State under Benito Mussolini and the two under Gerhard Schroeder and Berlussconi, respectively would not have been different. But we know how the policies, actions and practices followed by the government changes the expression of sovereignty of the state. In fact, political power and legitimacy enjoyed by the government becomes the basis for expression of sovereignty of the state. Political power may be understood in terms of ‘institutionalized power of the state and government—power to make laws and policies, to implement and secure obedience to these and to maintain law and order and justice in society.’2 And these, to a large extent, dependent on how government behaves.
There is this realization that sovereignty basically is expressed in the policies, actions and practices of a particular government and that its legitimacy and authority is inseparable from that of the government’s actions, policies and practices. This has attracted pluralists like Laski to question the absolute power attributed to sovereignty. For him, sovereignty’s claim to preeminence always means sovereignty of a government. And governments consisting of fallible men, cannot claim to have unlimited authority in the name of sovereignty.
In brief, we may say that for Bodin, Hobbes and Austin sovereignty is a coercive or commanding power and its legitimacy and authority is self-emanating, that is, it lies in the source itself. For pluralists, authority is limited by its purpose and hence sovereignty can neither be automatic nor comprehensive. In a Marxian sense, sovereignty or any power in a class divided society is a class power and is used to maintain a class divided society and capitalist mode of production. Mao’s famous statement that power flows from the barrel of the gun exemplifies naked and coercive power. Neo-Marxists like Antonio Gramsci has sought to capture the façade of legitimacy and authority in a class divided society through his concept of hegemony about which we will discuss later.
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