SOVEREIGNTY

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 403.

POWER

Power can be broadly defined as the ability to achieve a desired outcome, sometimes referred to in terms of the ‘power to' do something. This notion of power includes everything from the ability to keep oneself alive to the ability of government to promote economic growth. In political analysis, however, power is usually thought of as a relationship; that is, as the ability to influence the behaviour of others in a manner not of their choosing. It is referred to in terms of having ‘power over' others. Power thus exists when A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done. Power is often distinguished from *authority on the grounds that the former is based upon the ‘ability' to influence others, whereas the latter involves the ‘right' to do so. Power may, more narrowly, be associated with the ability to punish and reward, bringing it close to force or manipulation, in contrast to ‘influence', which also encompasses rational persuasion.

However, power can be exerted in various ways. This has resulted in the emergence of different conceptions of power, sometimes viewed as different dimensions or ‘faces' of power. First, power is understood as decision-making: conscious judgements that in some way shape actions or influence decisions. This notion is analogous to the idea of physical or mechanical power, in that it implies that power involves being ‘pulled' or ‘pushed' against one's will. Keith Boulding (1989) has distinguished between three ways of influencing decisions: the use of force or intimidation (‘the stick'); productive exchanges involving mutual gain (‘the deal'); and the creation of obligations, loyalty and commitment (‘the kiss'). Second, power may take the form of agenda setting: the ability to prevent decisions being made, that is, in effect, non-decision-making. This involves the ability to prevent issues or proposals being aired; E. E. Schattschneider (1960) summed this up in his famous assertion that ‘organisation is the mobilisation of bias'. Third, power can take the form of thought control: the ability to influence another by shaping what he or she thinks, wants or needs. This is sometimes portrayed by Lukes (1974) as the ‘radical' face of power because it exposes processes of cultural and psychological control in society and, more generally, highlights the impact of *ideology.

Significance

There is a sense in which all *politics is about power. The practice of politics is often portrayed as little more than the exercise of power, and the academic subject as, in essence, the study of power. Without doubt, students of politics are students of power: they seek to know who has it, how it is used and on what basis it is exercised. However, disagreements about the nature of power run deep and have significant implications for political analysis. Although it would be wrong to suggest that different ‘faces' of power necessarily result in different models of the distribution of power in society, power as decision-making is commonly linked to *pluralism (because it tends to highlight the influence of a number of political actors), while power as agenda setting is often associated with *elitism (because it exposes the capacity of vested interests to organise issues out of politics), and power as thought control is commonly linked to *Marxism (because it draws attention to forms of ideological indoctrination that mask the reality of class rule).

The concept of power is accorded particular significance by analysts who subscribe to what is called ‘power politics'. Power politics is an approach to politics based upon the assumption that the pursuit of power is the principal human goal. The term is generally used descriptively and is closely linked to *realism. This is a tradition that can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and his assertion that the basic human urge is to seek ‘power after power'. The theory of power politics portrays politics as nothing more than an arena of struggle or competition between differently interested actors. At the national level on-going struggle between individuals and groups is usually used to justify strong government, the virtue of *government being that, as the supreme power, it alone is capable of establishing order. At the international level the power politics approach emphasises the inherent instability of a world riven by competing national interests and links the hope of peace to the establishment of a balance of power.

Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and unlimited *power. However, a distinction is commonly made between legal sovereignty and political sovereignty. Legal sovereignty refers to supreme legal *authority; that is, an unchallengeable right to demand compliance, as defined by *law. Political sovereignty, in contrast, refers to unlimited political power; that is, the ability to command obedience, which is typically ensured by a monopoly of coercive force. The term sovereignty is used in two distinct though related senses, usually understood as external sovereignty and internal sovereignty. External sovereignty relates to a *state's place in the international order and its capacity to act as an independent and autonomous entity. This is what is meant by terms such as ‘national sovereignty' and ‘sovereign state'. Internal sovereignty is the notion of a supreme power/authority within the state, located in the body that makes decisions that are binding on all citizens, groups and institutions within the state's territorial boundaries. This is how the term is used in cases such as ‘parliamentary sovereignty' and ‘popular sovereignty'.

Significance

The concept of sovereignty emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a result of the development in Europe of the modern state. As the authority of transnational institutions, such as the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire faded, centralising monarchs in England, France, Spain and elsewhere were able to claim to exercise supreme power, and they did this in a new language of sovereignty. In the writings of Jean Bodin (1530–96) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), sovereignty was used as a justification for monarchical *absolutism. For Bodin, law amounted to little more than the command of the sovereign, and subjects were required simply to obey. However, whereas Bodin accepted that the sovereign monarch was constrained by the will of God or natural law, Hobbes defined sovereignty as a monopoly of coercive power and advocated that it be vested in the hands of a single, unchallengeable rule. The basic justification for internal sovereignty as developed by Bodin and Hobbes is that the existence of a single focus of allegiance and a supreme source of law within a state is the only sure guarantee of order and stability. Hobbes in particular offered citizens a stark choice between absolutism and anarchy.

Other versions of internal sovereignty, such as a Rousseau's (1712–78) notion of popular sovereignty, expressed in the idea of the ‘general will', and John Austin's (1790–1859) doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, viewed as the ‘Monarch in Parliament', linked sovereignty, respectively, to *democracy and *constitutionalism. What all such thinkers, however, had in common is that they believed that sovereignty could be, and should be, located in a determinate body. In an age of pluralistic and democratic government this ‘traditional' doctrine of sovereignty has come in for growing criticism. Its opponents argue either that it is intrinsically linked to its absolutist past, and if so is frankly undesirable, or that it is no longer applicable to modern systems of government which operate according to networks of checks and balances. It has been suggested, for instance, that liberal democratic principles are the very antithesis of sovereignty in that they argue for a distribution of power amongst a number of institutions, none of which can meaningfully claim to be sovereign. This is particularly evident in the case of *federalism, which is based upon the paradoxical notion of shared sovereignty.

While questions about internal sovereignty have in a democratic age appeared increasingly outdated, the issue of external sovereignty has become absolutely vital. Indeed, some of the deepest divisions in modern politics, from the Arab –Israeli conflict to tensions in former Yugoslavia, involve disputed claims to such sovereignty. Historically, the notion of external sovereignty has been closely linked to the struggle for popular government, the two ideas fusing to create the modern notion of ‘national sovereignty'. External sovereignty has thus come to embody the principles of national independence and self-government. Only if a *nation is

sovereign are its people capable of fashioning their own destiny according to their particular needs and interests. To ask a nation to surrender its sovereignty is tantamount to asking its people to give up their *freedom. This is why external or national sovereignty is so keenly felt and, when it is threatened, so fiercely defended. The potent appeal of political *nationalism is the best evidence of this. However, external sovereignty has been criticised on both moral and theoretical grounds. Moral concerns about external sovereignty arise from its capacity to block interference in the affairs of other states, even when they are violating the natural rights of their citizens. Theoretical problems stem from the fact that the notion of an independent or sovereign state may no longer be meaningful in an increasingly interdependent world. *Globalisation, for instance, may mean that political sovereignty is impossible while legal sovereignty has been reduced to a diplomatic nicety.