Where is sovereignty located in a democracy

This standard has been upheld in the constitutions of democratic nation-states today. The state power serves all citizens and can be exercised only in cases within the scope stipulated by law, and by means specified by law.

Sovereignty shall be vested in the people. Popular sovereignty as the legitimate source of authority in government has become so widely recognized among the democracies of our world that even non-democracies try to claim it in order to justify their exercise of power. In reality, the Communist Party of China has appropriated power for itself, which it exercises dictatorially to suppress any organized opposition to its authority.

Although economic freedom has increased dramatically in China in recent years, the party still tightly controls political life. Home Popular Sovereignty. Series: Studien zur Politischen Soziologie. Studies on Political Sociology. Volume 10 1. Edition Acknowledgments Details. Introduction Details. I Sovereignty and Modern Political Thought.

The Origin of the Modern State Details. Thomas Hobbes and the Absolutist Paradigm of Sovereignty. Against Essentialist Reading of Hobbes Details. The Form and Location of Sovereignty Details. Limits on Sovereign Power Details. The Problem of Legal Legitimacy Details. Sovereignty of the Legal System Details. Cosmopolitan Monism Contested Details. Sovereignty and Democracy.

Sovereignty Between Law and Politics Details. Democracy, Autonomy, and Popular Sovereignty Details. Critique of Liberal Jurisprudence. After all, even medieval political thought was decisively shaped by the recovery of the works of Aristotle. It is true that early modern thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes openly attacked classical political thought and sought to create or to justify a political order that would differ in crucial respects from the ancient city; yet a major aim of these founders of modern political philosophy was to recover the autonomy and supremacy of political life that had characterized classical Greece and Rome.

Moreover, the peculiarly modern doctrine of sovereignty first developed by Bodin and Hobbes, however it may differ in other ways from the classical understanding, agrees with the Aristotelian view that the political order is the highest association or the supreme community — at least in the sense of not being properly subject to any external power.

It is not mere happenstance that the feudal period was a time not only of disorder but of oppression and severe inequality. An absence of firm borders and of clear lines of jurisdiction may not be a problem in empires or other political forms where governments are not accountable to their citizens. But if the citizens are to govern, or at least to hold their governors accountable, it must be clear who is and who is not included in the polity.

And it is hard to see how this can be accomplished without clear lines of demarcation indicating whose voices have the right to be counted. There is more than a merely verbal connection between the modern concept of sovereignty and the contemporary idea of the sovereignty of the people.

Notwithstanding the fact that Bodin and Hobbes were champions of monarchy, it is their doctrine of sovereignty that prepared the way for the notion that all political power ultimately derives from the consent of naturally free and equal individuals. It is the modern nation-state that provided the indispensable framework for building a political order that protects the rights and heeds the voices of all the people who belong to it.

Modern democratic government is inevitably linked to stateness. Without a state, there can be no citizenship; without citizenship, there can be no democracy. While there are some who ignore or are indifferent to this question, it would be inaccurate and unfair to claim that this is the general view of the champions of transnationalism.

As a result, many students and proponents of the eu seem to be groping toward the view that the eu can become a democratic non -state. They refuse to accept the dichotomy according to which the eu must be either 1 an essentially intergovernmental organization that derives its democratic legitimacy through the national parliaments of its member states or 2 a genuine federal state that derives its democratic legitmacy through governing institutions directly responsible to the European electorate.

They say, with more than a little justification, that the eu already has gone well beyond being a merely intergovernmental institution yet falls far short of being a federal state. Thus, they define the eu as a non-state, non-nation polity or entity. It may be true that so far this is largely the language of academics rather than politicians or publics, but the argument has a considerable attraction for the latter as well. First, this non-state conception appeals to a strong antipolitical disposition that is seen today in many parts of the world but is especially powerful in Europe.

One way of viewing the non-state vision of the eu is that it promises to provide governance without the need for government. According to the classic modern doctrine of sovereignty, of course, it was regarded as impossible to maintain sovereignty in both a political union and its constituent parts.

They still, in fine, seem to cherish with blind devotion the political monster of an imperium in imperio. Government, according to Hamilton, involves the power not only of making laws, but of enforcing them.

The Federalist goes on to support this reasoning by appeals both to the nature of man and to the experience of previous confederations. Because men love power, those who exercise sovereignty are likely to resist attempts to constrain or direct them. Thus, in confederations that attempt to unite sovereign bodies, there is inevitably a centrifugal tendency for the parts to free themselves from the center. The subsequent numbers of the Federalist then explore the experience of confederations both ancient and modern.

Second, in spite of the lack of a mechanism to enforce compliance, the decisions of the eu are largely accepted by member states — and this without resort to the sword. In fact, the eu seems to present the spectacle of constituent units obeying the dictates of the center not only without violence but even without visible coercion. In trying to understand this unprecedented phenomenon, I have found particularly helpful a formulation offered by J. Weiler, one of the most distinguished scholars of European law.

In effect, it has become a federal non-state whose decisions are accepted voluntarily by its constituent units rather than backed up by the modes of hierarchical coercion classically employed by the modern state. Second, presuming that the federal non-state can continue to maintain itself, what would be the ultimate consequences for democracy?

The first of these questions concerns the viability or practicability of the federal non-state, while the second concerns its ultimate desirability. I cannot hope to address these matters in more than a very preliminary way here, but let me try to offer a few reflections about them. I n seeking to understand what has enabled the eu to function effectively as a federal non-state, I would emphasize the fact that its member states are all liberal democracies.

That thesis, based on an imposing record of historical evidence, holds that liberal democracies rarely if ever fight wars against each other though they are quite prone to fight wars against countries that are not liberal democracies.

The web of ties that bind member states of the eu has undoubtedly contributed to the sense that war among them is unthinkable, but one might argue that the nature of the member states is more important in this regard than the framework that connects them. After all, war is equally unthinkable between an eu member state and a nonmember like Norway or Switzerland, just as it is unthinkable between the United States and Canada or between Australia and New Zealand.

The fact that contemporary liberal democracies do not fear that force will be used against them by their fellow liberal democracies makes possible a previously unprecedented degree of integration among them. In his remarkably concise essay The Postmodern State and the World Order London: demos and the Foreign Policy Centre, , Cooper provides what, to my mind, is a much more persuasive case than does John Ruggie for the novelty of the eu and for the willingness of its member states to surrender some of their sovereignty.