Pluralists maintain that as far as international law is concerned, state is not legally unlimited in its external relations to other states. Further, internationalism and international organizations having allegiance reaching beyond the limits of the State are also discernable.
Hugo Krabbe (The Modern Idea of the State) tends to extend his idea ot law as outcome of the sense of right into the arena of international relations. To the extent this principle extends to international arena, legal activities of the existing state should contract. He believes that eventually a super-national state will come about and present states will become provinces of that super-national state. However, till such a position is reached, he ruefully concedes that the ‘international community must pass through the phase of the idea of sovereignty’.
Laski, who is considered to be an ardent advocate of internationalism, finds trends towards internationalism and allegiance, which reach beyond the limits of the State. He says, ‘internationally, it is not difficult to conceive the organization of an allegiance which reaches beyond the limits of the State.’19 He, in fact, envisages an authority predominant over states, which is entrusted the regulation of affairs of more than national interest. This means abolition of state sovereignty on the international side. For Laski, the concept of external sovereignty is a major cause of war. As internationalism increases, cause of war decreases.
Norman Angell, considered as modern individualist, also provides some theoretical basis of allegiance beyond national and geographical boundaries. His contention is that ‘men are united by a community of feeling based on economic interests which not only runs counter to but frequently transcends national and geographical boundaries.’ This, men do because ‘it pays men better to think and feel as members of the universal, economic society whose attribute is peace, than to think and feel as members of limited political societies whose attribute is war.’20 Angell regards the State as merely a ‘piece of administrative mechanism’ which can be ‘superseded and transferred to the evolutionary scrap heap as soon as machinery better calculated to advance men’s interests has been devised.’ He would like a national state merged in an international order of society based on an economic basis.
From above, it seems that the pluralists tend to marshal historical and evolutionary factors (family, church etc. as associations), social factor (origin of law), juristic factor (personality), political and administrative factors (federalism, decentralization) and international factors (internationalism, international law) to build a framework of pluralist attack on the monist theory of sovereignty.
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