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The Erosion of External Sovereignty?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Geoffrey L. Goodwin
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Extract

‘EXTERNAL SOVEREIGNTY’ IS THE CONCERN OF THIS PAPER, AND THE extent to which it has been eroded, in substance if not in form, by the pressures of the modern world. The formal distinction between external sovereignty and internal sovereignty needs to be emphasized at the outset. Externally, sovereignty connotes equality of status between the states – the distinct and separate entities – which make up our international society. Internally, it connotes the exercise of supreme authority by those states within their individual territorial boundaries. From Bodin who, in De La République (1577), saw souveraineté as the exclusive right ‘to give lawes unto all and everie one of its . . . subjects and to receive none from them’ to the Permanent Court of International Justice which, in the Wimbledon Case (1922), held that the sovereign state ‘is subject to no other state and has full and exclusive powers within its jurisdiction without prejudice to the limits set by applicable law’, the concept of the sovereign state has implied both supremacy within and equality of status without.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1974 , pp. 61 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1974

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References

2 James, Alan, ‘The Contemporary Relevance of National Sovereignty’ in Liefer, M. (ed.), Constraints and Adjustments in British Foreign Policy, Allen and Unwin, London, 1972, p. 18 Google Scholar.

3 The slogan of the United Nations General Assembly.

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5 Even if one allows for the extent to which France ’ s special geographical position enabled her to avoid what might otherwise have been the strategic penalties of doing so.

6 The Times, London, 23 September 1971.

7 See in particular, Mitrany, D., A Working Peace System, Quadrangle, Chicago, 1966 Google Scholar.

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10 Ibid., p. 119. How decentralization internally is to be reconciled with centralization internationally is not explained.

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19 The right of host countries to nationalize or expropriate foreign owned companies is now generally conceded, and the latters ’ main preoccupation is with the terms of compensation.

20 Witness the success of members of OPEC, especially when they present a united front.

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25 Alan James, op. cit., p. 18. Italics added.