Author: haroonkhan
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Sovereignty, Power and Authority
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?…
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Political Pluralism and Pluralist Critiques of Sovereignty
A Brief Introduction to Political Pluralism The term ‘pluralism’ is often used in many senses like philosophical, ethical, cultural and political. However, for our purpose we are concerned only with ‘political pluralism’. Political pluralism has been viewed as a doctrine, which asserts that certain groups in society (e.g., church, family, professional associations, labour unions, local…
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Introduction
The concept of sovereignty relates specifically to the concept of the State and may lose its essence without it. The state can be seen as an overarching political organization over a territorially demarcated political community. By virtue of this, the State gets a dominant position and tends to regulate various aspects of society, and other…
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Sovereignty and the Indian Constitution
The Preamble to the Constitution of India declares India to be a ‘Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic’.40 Though the Constitution itself does not elaborate or define the meaning of ‘Sovereignty’, the Supreme Court in various pronouncements has sought to establish what it could mean or imply. In Gopalan Vs. State of Madras (1950) and Union of India Vs. Madan Gopal (1954), the Court held…
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‘Instituted Sovereignty’ versus ‘Acquired Sovereignty’
The types of sovereignty that we have mentioned above cannot sufficiently capture the nature of sovereignty in a colonial context. For example, British colonial rule in India enjoyed or arrogated for itself a special kind of hegemonic power. Colonial sovereignty by its very nature and political arrangements denied Indians the principle of popular sovereignty. Even…
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Internal versus External Sovereignty
As we have seen, the formulations of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Bentham and Austin have provided the logical and theoretical ground for strong sovereign and legislative supremacy within the State. Internal sovereignty is also based on the territorial concept. On the other hand, external sovereignty represents the power to represent the State in its relations with…
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De Jure and De Facto Sovereignty
A situation may arise when actual sovereignty may pass on to someone/a body of men/an assembly which is able to make its will prevail whether it has legal status or not though formally sovereignty rests with another person or body or assembly. This situation may arise in revolutions, depositions from power or temporary coups. To…
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National Sovereignty
The famous Declaration of the Rights of Man emerging from the French Revolution proclaimed the principle of national sovereignty affirming that ‘all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation.’ It has been stated that this principle was invented to deny the old principle of the sovereignty of the monarch. Garner maintains that the Constitution of Belgium (Article 25), the 1923 Constitution…
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Popular Sovereignty
The doctrine of political sovereignty stops short of assigning a philosophical basis of supremacy to the political community and remains a reluctant doctrine of popular sovereignty. Political sovereignty gives the electorate primacy while popular sovereignty attributes power to the masses/people. Popular sovereignty attributes sovereignty to the people or the community which has a ‘common consciousness…
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Political Sovereignty
The concept of political sovereignty has been put forward by the English constitutionalist, A. V. Dicey in his Law of the Constitution. He says that, ‘the body is politically sovereign, the will of which is ultimately obeyed by the citizens of the State.’34 Though the legal sovereign is the supreme law-making and law-enforcing body, behind this legal sovereign…