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Sovereignty: ground rule or gibberish?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Alan James
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In the study of International Relations few terms cause more confusion than sovereignty. As all the territorial participants in international life proclaim themselves to be sovereign it is a difficult term to get away from. But it also seems enormously difficult to get hold of, at least in any way which combines clarity and helpfulness. The matter is not assisted by the common suspicion that sovereignty has something to do with law, for law is widely taken to be an element to which any level-headed student of the international scene will give little time. On the other hand, sovereignty is also often supposed to have something to do with power—and that is a factor which, it is generally agreed, commands attention. However, in addition sovereignty has at least the smell, if not the clear suggestion, of absolute power—and that surely is something which is hardly applicable to any of the world's states, not even the super-states. All that can be said with confidence about them is that they are stronger than the others—but in that case what price the equality which sovereign states profess on the ground that they are all sovereign?

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 1984 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1984

References

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27. The largest and best-known exception, the Anglo-French South Pacific condominium of New Hebrides, became a sovereign state in 1980.

28. Another case of territory being under the sovereignty of one state but administered by another is the New Territories of Hong Kong, which is controlled by Britain until 1997 under a 99-year lease from China. (The New Territories are to be distinguished from the colony of Hong Kong, although in practical terms the latter is dependent on the former.) Until 1979 the Panama Canal Zone was a similar case. Since then the United States has been in effective control of only about forty per cent of the former Zone, including the Canal itself, and is due to return that to the territorial sovereign at the end of 1999.

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