Category: Concept Of Sovereignty In Political Theory

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) is considered to be the theorist of ‘absolute sovereignty’. He grounded the nature and powers of the sovereign on the necessities entailed by the state of nature. His argued that the state of nature and the formulation of the instinct of self-preservation in individuals led to the origin of the State. Uncertainty…

Discussions of the three writers mentioned previously suggest that during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (in Europe), the concept of sovereignty had been discussed in three forms, namely, national sovereignty (Bodin), popular sovereignty (Althusius) and external sovereignty (Grotius). Furthermore, we find that the concept of natural law played important role both in terms of…

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…

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…

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…

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…