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 of Rumania (Article 23) and the 1925 Constitution of Chile (Article 2) proclaimed the same principle.³⁷ It signifies that sovereignty is the power of the nation personified and not in the electorate (as Dicey says) or in a determinate legal superior (as monist theory says). However, it is difficult to say as to where sovereignty lies in terms of national sovereignty. If it resides in the people it is popular sovereignty and when it is in the electorate where universal adult suffrage prevails, it is political sovereignty.

The principle of national sovereignty was also employed by the colonized people to put forward their struggle against colonial dominations. Attaining national sovereignty fostered anti-colonial struggles in many countries.