Showing papers on "Sovereignty published in 1976"

The Eighteenth–Century Debate on the Sovereignty of Parliament

Abstract: I hope to show in this paper that the national debate in the press and in parliament about the doctrine of the sovereignty of parliament is of crucial importance to a proper understanding of the politics and, still more, of the political ideology of eighteenth-century Britain. The significance that this doctrine had come to assume by the later eighteenth century becomes clearly apparent from any study of the dispute between Britain and the American colonies. In the final analysis the most serious point at issue between the mother country and her colonies rested on a fundamental disagreement over the nature and location of sovereignty. The majority of the ruling oligarchy in Britain saw parliament as the creator and interpreter of law and superior to any other rights or powers in the state. To the American colonists it appeared that the arbitrary and absolute power which Hobbes and Filmer had put in the hands of a king had been transferred to the whole legislature of King, Lords and Commons. In rejecting what they regarded as tyranny in another form, the colonists moved towards the concept of divided sovereignty with the people as the ultimate source of authority.

Europe and Africa: Decolonization or Dependency

Abstract: FIFTEEN years after most of Africa received its independence, Europe is still present and influential in the continent. The Euro pean presence has, however, shifted from overt and direct to more subtle forms. While military occupation and sovereign control over African territories have all but been eliminated, political in fluence, economic preponderance, and cultural conditioning remain. Britain and France, and with them the rest of the European Commu nity, maintain a relatively high level of aid and investment, trade dominance, and a sizable flow of teachers, businessmen, statesmen, tourists and technical assistants. Perhaps most symbolically signif icant of all, the long-nurtured dream of an institutionalized Eur African community was finally inaugurated on February 28, 1975, when the convention of trade and cooperation was signed at Lom? between the European Nine and the then-37 independent Black African states (plus nine islands and enclaves in the Caribbean and the Pacific). Thus, Eur-African relations are a matter of continuity and change, but judgments of them vary considerably, according to the impor tance given to one or the other of these two elements. To some, the successor of colonialism is neocolonialism and dependency; for others, what is taking place is gradual disengagement, and the multilateral ization of ties to the developed nations. The first look askance at the continuing presence, comparing it with an ideal of total mastery of one's destiny; to them the change seems trivial, or worse, insidious. The second emphasize actual changes, the moves toward indepen dence, and see them as part of a continuing process. The best perspec tive obviously is the one that can encompass and provide an explana tion for the largest number of facts. The dependency approach is now widely used in analyzing Third World developmental problems. According to this school of thought the attainment of political sovereignty masks the reality of continued dependence on world economic structures, and calculations of power and interest within this dependency relationship explain underdevel opment. Impatient with the slow progress of African states toward development and the real difficulty for new nations in narrowing the gap that separates them from the industrial states, dependency an alysts locate the source of the new nations' developmental problems

The Red Cross as transnational movement: conserving and changing the nation-state system

Abstract: The Red Cross, a transnational movement, has taken action in conflict situations that both conserves the authority of states and also circumscribes state behavior in the name of fundamental human rights. On the one hand, the Red Cross, principally through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is cooperative toward states and acts discreetly in matters regarded by states as sensitive. On the other hand, the Red Cross has promoted the law of armed conflict to limit states and has accepted quasi-supranational authority in international armed conflict in the form of the right of automatic ICRC access to certain detainees. On the basis of this right, or sometimes on the basis of bypassing legal issues, the ICRC is able to transcend the “sovereignty” of states (and non-state parties as well). While the Red Cross movement is highly fragmented and encompasses a number of non-cosmopolitan elements, the historical impact of the movement has been to help liberalize the nation-state system, largely through the actions of the ICRC, while reinforcing fundamental authority within that system.

The Right to Rule in England: Depositions and the Kingdom's Authority, 1327-1485

Abstract: A SERIES OF FIVE DEPOSITIONS between 1327 and 1485 drove the English to conjure up arguments and principles justifying a change in kings. Five sovereigns-Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Edward V, and Richard III-lost the throne permanently; and four usurpers-Henry IV, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII-claimed to be "lawfully seised and possessed of the said crown" in their stead. To sanction the removal of an unsatisfactory sovereign and his successor's usurpation, men of law-both common and canondevised apologias. These justificatory declarations, taken seriatim, created a doctrine of restraint upon the regal power that eventually became a part of England's constitutional, or public, law. On each of these occasions, God and His Englishmen had the chance to choose a new king. As they did so, their spokesmen defined further the right to rule and the authority to govern, thereby limiting the English monarchy, for to define is to curb. The deposers, to justify their deeds, alleged deceit, deviousness, distrust, and "uselessness" in those they removed; and sometimes irresponsibility, bad faith, and a breach of the coronation oath. The deposed kings had governed, they said, without good counsel and consent, or against England's laws and customs. Positively, the usurpers claimed the crown through inheritance or by God's will, conquest, or election. Thereby they brought into play and into public law God's authority, the people's, and the kingdom's-authority that was expressed through the three estates of the realm and, finally, through parliament. These indictments of beaten kings and the vindications of their conquerors contained much bad history. In due season they made good law. Again and again the official apologias raised basic questions about public law and governance. To whom was, or ought, the good king to be responsible? And for what and how much was he himself to be answerable, and to whom? To God alone? Yet that position was hardly satisfactory. To medieval men, the kingdom possessed authority of its own that in several ways complemented God's, thus suggesting that the king was, in some measure, also

Three 17th Century German Theorists of Federalism: Althusius, Hugo and Leibniz

Abstract: The rise of centralized national states in the 16th century gave rise to the doctrine of sovereignty, or the theory that within a given polity there ought to be a power internally supreme and externally independent. Consequently, the modern state came to be the touchstone of political thinking. Modern states increasingly absorbed medieval noble and ecclesiastical prerogative, centralized power, and liberated themselves from the international influence of the declining Papacy and Holy Roman Empire.2 Even as the sovereign state became the model of acceptable political analysis, the steady decline of the Holy Roman Empire left on the imperial borders the nearly independent areas of the Netherlands and Switzerland, both of which had enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in the Middle Ages.3 Sur-

Self-Defence and Israel in International Law: A Reappraisal

Abstract: Dean Acheson frankly reconfirmed the right of self-preservation, when he asserted, “…law simply does not deal with … questions of ultimate power—power that comes close to the sources of sovereignty…. No law can destroy the state creating the law. The survival of states is not a matter of law”. It is beyond the law. Given the existence of man's elementary loyalty to autonomous states, the necessity for using force springs from the need of states to depend fundamentally on self-help in order to guarantee their survival and welfare. This search for security in a system of politics without government, forces the state to be dependent upon military self-help.

Somali Territorial Claims in International Perspective

Abstract: Tensions on Africa's Horn will most probably not be resolved either peaceably or according to the dictates of Wilsonian justice. Three of the points of the Somali flag's five pointed star point ominously to Ethiopia's Ogaden region, Kenya's Northeastern Province and France's soon to be independent Territory of Afars and Issas. In each of these three regions, the populations are mostly Somali, and the Somali government in Muqdishu (Mogadishu ) has longed to redeem those provinces. But not all international issues. can be solved according to Wilsonian dictates, and the Somalis have had few allies in their call for national selfdetermination of all Somali peoples. Questions involving state sovereignty, control over potentially rich oil reserves, and access to the sea have led Ethiopia and Kenya with the support of other states, either to ignore or reject Somali claims. Two major events have brotught this issue back into public consciousness. First, the Soviet Union has established a strong foothold in the Somali Republic, and in return for Soviet military access to the port of Berbera, the Somalis are receiving substantial military aid and fruits of this aid have been moving northwestwards from Muqdishu to the Ethiopian border. Since the United States is a military supplier of both Ethiopia and Kenya,' a resurgent border war involving the superpowers seems possible. Second, on December 31, 1975, France announced that it planned to grant the Territory of Afars and Lssas its independence. It is no secret that both Somalia and Ethiopia, albeit for different reasons, covet this small territory, and that the territory could in no way defend itself against any military move by Somalia or by Ethiopia. With international eyes again focused on Africa's Horn, perhaps a review of the Somali claims is in order. The political situation in regard to Somalia irridenta from an African perspective, and then from a more global perspective, will then be analysed. Finally, the implications of this situation in light of America's general international interests will be discussed. The United States, it will be argued, has in the Horn of Africa

The Three Citizenships

Abstract: We are at once citizens of the nation, the states and their local governments To the extent this citizenship is more than a legal formality, it implies a loyalty, a loyalty of varying degrees to three distinct though by no means separate political communities The degree of loyalty evinced toward these communities has differed widely over time and over place as circumstances have made one or other plane of government a source of attachment and instrument of common purpose more meaningful to all or some of the nation's inhabitants Jefferson saw the ward republics as perhaps the most significant level of loyalty to be followed by states and federal government in that order The nationalist of the Civil War saw in the nation the paramount value center and had little patience with claims of the states And indeed the Civil War transformed the Union from what many regarded as a confederation of states into a nation state The federal government which initially was the creation of the states became as the result of the Civil War the final judge of its own powers, if not an Austinian sovereign Furthermore the new states carved out of the territories were creations of the federal government rather than creators of that government The thousands of immigrants coming from abroad came to America, not to the individual states, though ethnic concentrations gave particular states a special character and attraction Vast internal migrations loosened the ties of local territorial loyalty and made many an American a transient with little if any in the way of political roots The thrust of national market capitalism and the nation state has been to batter down the walls not only of the city as Max Weber saw but of the states as well How can you *Presented at the Center for the Study of Federalism's Conference "Toward '76 Serving the

Constitutional Constraints on the Conduct of Foreign and Defense Policy: A Nonjudicial Model

Abstract: But in the exercise of such a prerogative, as declaring war, dispatch, secrecy, and vigor are often indispensable, and always useful towards success. On the other hand, it may be urged in reply, that the power of declaring war is not only the highest sovereign prerogative; but that it is in its own nature and effects so critical and calamitous, that it requires the utmost deliberation, and the successive review of all the councils of the nation. War, in its best estate, never fails to impose upon the people the most burthensome taxes and personal sufferings. . . . It is sometimes fatal to public liberty itself, by introducing a spirit of military glory, which is ready to follow, wherever a successful commander will lead; and in a republic, whose institutions are essentially founded on the basis of peace, there is infinite danger, that war will find it both imbecile in defence, and eager for contest. . . . The cooperation of all the branches of the legislative power ought, upon principle, to be required in this the highest act of legislation, as it is in all others.

Chinese World Strategy and South Asia: The China Factor in Indo-Pakistani Relations

Abstract: WHEN THE PAKISTANI ARMY under General Niazi surrendered unconditionally to the Indians in December 1971, the IndiaPakistan War was officially terminated. As a direct outcome of the Pakistani defeat East Pakistan gained its independence and 75,000,000 people found themselves with an independent, sovereign nation of their own-the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The war itself had lasted for only twelve days, a period during which the armies of India surprised the world when, with creative military organization and strategy, they expeditiously vanquished a formidable enemy in a vigorous operation which was described as "an achievement reminiscent of the German blitzkrieg across France in 1940."1 The war and the resultant emergence of a new Asian state was not only the most important event to transpire in South Asia since the inception of Pakistan, but it had a profound impact upon the sensitive arena of international affairs as well. Moreover, beyond the general regional ramifications of the developments born out of the clash between two Third World nations, the individual global strategies of the great contemporary international powers, namely, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China (PRC), were by no means left unaffected. The war between India and Pakistan in 1971 was cause for much concern on the part of the Government of the PRC, which for most of the 1960s had nursed a steadily growing friendship with Pakistan while, for a number of reasons, China-India relations subsequent to the 1962 border flare-up between the latter two powers had undergone a process of virtual deterioration and collapse. By mid-1971, the future of the Indian subcontinent was at stake. The East Pakistan crisis which so violently culminated in the India-Pakistan War was a matter which

A World of Becoming: From Pluralism to Corporatism

Abstract: The ability of modern Western governments to perform their governing function has been seriously eroded by the impact of science and technology. As mere arbitrators and harmonizers among groups they are no longer independent and vigorous enough to represent and further the public interest. Keehn argues that the responsibility for the erosion of sovereignty and the difficulty in explaining the growing discrepancy between the theory and reality of the modern state must be attributed to pluralist theory in its normative and analytical aspects. He maintains that to restore government to its governing and theory to its explanatory function, pluralism should be replaced by corporatism both as interpretation and as ideal in the American system.

Political Aspects Of Managing The International Monetary System

Abstract: I HAVE been asked to talk about the political aspects of the management of the international monetary system. I will not, however, be talking about political problems as such, but only about how one can try to handle them. What we call the international monetary system is of course the monetary relationships between those countries which have accepted multinational obligations and responsibilities, which means in fact the members of the International Monetary Fund. The problems involved are of course of a highly political nature. The balance of payments and exchange rates affect the whole economic and social life of a country. The domestic policies which have to be pursued in order to achieve certain objectives are at the core of each country's political life, and I might add that in my experience there is no field where governments at present attach so much importance to sovereignty as the monetary field, be it only because of its economic and social repercussions. In my opinion, it is easier to belong to Nato and to fulfil one's obligations to Nato than to belong to the IMF and fulfil one's obligations to the IMF, because it affects people much more directly. T!herefore the question is: How can the Fund exerci,se its jurisdictional and regulatory powers and decide about access to its resources-which is sometimes quite important-without running into insuperable political difficulties? On the other hand, how can countries co-operate within and with the Fund without feeling that they have to give up too many of their sovereign rights? We must first look at the problem within the Fund-how it manages to operate; and then from the point of view of the Fund's relations with outside bodies-how it can manage the negotiations and discussions which will, one hopes, lead to a reform of the international monetary system. Filrst, within the Fund. In my opinion it is nothing short of a miracle that 127 countries, of all sizes, at all possible stages of development, with different political and social regimes and philosophies, can co-operate. Of course, in order to carry out or to implement policies, the Fund itself has to stay out of politics. But there is still the problem of how to accommodate the individual members.

Intellectuals and Their Discontents.

Abstract: is a peculiar paradox in the politics of large numbers of contemporary American intellectuals. They are "agin" the government. They have not, despite their momentary love affair with the dignity of the legislative branch during the investigations arising from the Watergate incident, become any more reconciled to politicians than they were in the time of H. L. Mencken and Edmund Wilson or than they have been ever since Henry Adams. They distrust the executive branch, too. They support every effort to force its activities into the light of day because they have no confidence in what it would do in secrecy. They deny its right to the obedience of its citizenry. The theory of sovereignty has practically disappeared from the popular subject of political philosophy, and legitimacy is spoken about mainly when it is said that the government has lost it. Even those who are more measured usually think that the government is doing the wrong thing; when it does the right thing, it does it in the wrong way. They denounce "bureaucratization," which they see as a manifestation of the wrong course taken by modern civilization. Few university graduates think of the civil service as a career on the level with the law, or medicine, or scientific research, or university and college teaching or even private business. Most of these attitudes are carried along by an old tradition; attitudes expressed in a more recent idiom are no more than variations on an old theme.

The Global Contract

Abstract: This essay on international economic order and foreign policy theory takes its departure from the observation that foreign policy theory and action are today confronted with a global economic problematique of revolutionary proportions, and therefore need to be re-examined It finds that the classical concepts of sovereignty, national interest, and power, though still valid, are too narrowly defined by the Realist school to be of much use It holds that the principle of politico-military ‘balance of power’ must be applied in conjunction with the principle of ‘optimal interdependence’ Using a cognitive map which identifies the principal actors and cleavages (global apartheid being judged to be the most dominant), and learning from socialist and capitalist theoreticians about possible solutions, it elaborates the meaning of ‘optimal interdependence’ It then presents an alternative theory of foreign policy and makes six strategic suggestions from that principle

Values and Society in Revolutionary America

Abstract: The original principles and values of the American Republic and how they were rooted in and were re flections of the particular social conditions in early America are the subjects of this paper. The foundation of the "Ameri can science of politics" was a hardheaded and realistic view of human nature. The founding fathers saw America as having in its power the ability to begin the world over by discover ing the "constant and universal principles" of government. What emerged from America's adaptation of the body of theory and tradition available was a system that was dis tinctively American. The American system incorporated the concept of the natural rights of man, existing independently of government. The government was limited by constitutions and by its representative nature; it was to be responsive and responsible to the people. The sovereignty resided within the people themselves. America would be safe from the tyranny of a majority faction by its multiplicity of interests. The primary purpose of gover...

The International Arms Trade

Abstract: It all began in the distant past when a nation or a subnational group discovered that effective defense or its political and military ambitions could be achieved better with arms produced elsewhere than with domestically produced weapons. This was the experience of our own revolutionary forces 200 years ago. Sovereignty confers on governments the responsibility for national security. Sovereignty, therefore, implies that a military force makes a nation a credible and independent member of the international community. If a country is unable to produce the weapons its leaders consider essential for those military forces, it can secure them from a supplier country which has political, military, and/or economic reasons for exporting them. Until the mid1930s, governments of supplier countries only occasionally interfered with the export of arms. Large armaments firms like Krupp, DuPont, and Vickers sold munitions and arms worldwide without restrictions. As arms became more sophisticated, and were sold to belligerents during the thirties, there was increased concern about involvement in foreign wars. Most Western nations began to put restrictions, such as export licenses and end-use requirements, on commercial sales. Today, the sale of weapons has become a government-to-government or government-regulated activity. Most countries would rather deal directly with the government of a supplier country in negotiating and completing sales, largely because of credit availability and certain complementary services, such as

The political system of the Republic of Transkei — an overview

Abstract: The political community of Transkei consists mainly of Xhosa‐speaking people, divided into at least 12 mainly unrelated chiefdom clusters, which formed a de facto population of more than 1,7‐million people in 1970. This political community will be the first of the Black homelands in South Africa to gain sovereign independence. Independence date is 26 October 1976. Experience in local administration and partial self‐government were gained through participating in the Glen‐Grey and Bunga systems on the one hand, and participation in the self‐governing structures and institutions that were based partly on traditional hierarchical concepts and partly on Westminster‐type central institutions on the other. This phase of self‐government was introduced in 1963. The new independence constitution of the Republic of Transkei is essentially an extension and an adaptation of the system created in 1963. Transkei now is a sovereign unitary Republic modelled on the principles of the Westminster democracy. This i...

Admiralty Law in Nineteenth Century California

Abstract: California lawmakers in the period 1850-1890 attempted to provide accessible formus and legislation attuned to the states' commercial problems and developed admiralty law which conflicted with the U.S. Constitution. While the leading cases are well-known to constitutional historians and admiralty lawyers, the California cases and their struggle with issues of sovereignty and federalism are little known in state history. The cases demonstrate a vital sense of state sovereignty, encouraged by a confused federal admiralty law, and illustrate the continuing effort of California lawmakers to provide commerce with useable law in a frontier state.

Difficulties of Cultural Emancipation in Africa

Abstract: For a long time ‘emancipation’ in Africa meant solely liberation from European rule. But when 17 African states became independent in 1960 and when from 1956 to 1966 32 countries finally attained national sovereignty, the continent, in part, emancipated itself from this type of colonial rule. Only in Southern Africa is it impossible to speak of emancipation in international legal terms. This state of affairs has engendered a strong sense of solidarity among independent African nations vis-a-vis the ‘unresolved’ area of the continent, as reflected in every conference of the Organisation of African Unity, as well as in many United Nations resolutions. However, it soon became clear to those who equated emancipation with legal sovereignty, with governments run by Africans with national flags and national anthems, that true emancipation must mean something else.

China and International Law: Implications for Foreign Policy

Abstract: I N THEIR STUDY of international law, sovereignty, and the state system, Chinese Communist writers and statesmen differ fundamentally from the dominant tradition of Western political and legal theory, which attempts to base general conclusions on valid first principles (ontological and epistemological), so that the conclusions are generally valid over many years and for most if not all nations. The Chinese assume that the formulations of political and legal theory should be wholly subservient to the needs of the Chinese state. Whatever value these formulations have as truth derives from their foundation in Marxist doctrine. Their truth, however, is less important than their usefulness, and this is gauged by how well they serve to justify the objectives of China's foreign policy. This set of basic assumptions leads to several somewhat overlapping aspects of the Chinese study of these basic political concepts, each aspect constituting a significant part of their formulations. Clearly their methodological assumptions profoundly affect their conclusions.

Sovereignty as political theory

Abstract: SOVEREIGNTY has many meanings in political theory.’ The principal traditional division in meaning-and therefore an essential issue in political theory-has been that of political versus legal sovereignty. The main characteristic of legal sovereignty is that it takes law-which is in fact a part of the concept of sovereignty and a consequence of a system of sovereignty-and attempts to make it the system itself; it imposes itself upon the community and somehow ‘gathers’ the power to do so during the process. The concept of legal sovereignty suffers the defect of presupposing a basic stability in social relations-a stability that would make the very concept of sovereignty unnecessary. Legal sovereignty has become closely linked with the ‘democratic’ view of sovereignty, even though its requirements are such that ‘democracy’ becomes essentially a description of a ceremonious induction of a government into office at more or less regular intervals.

Trade and Aid Relations, 1950–1957 : Credits

Abstract: The signature in Moscow on February 14, 1950, by the governments of the USSR and the PRC of a series of important agreements ushers in a new phase in the history of contemporary Sino-Soviet diplomacy. Foremost among these documents was the Treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance.1 Despite their predominantly political character, conventions of this type are considered by Soviet scholars as “seminal inter-state juridical acts for the establishment and broad development of mutual trade and other economic relations”2 on grounds that the climate of trust and intimacy thus generated on the political plane automatically stimulates increased contacts and efforts at collaboration in the commercial and economic spheres, too.3 For that matter, the texts of these treaties usually feature a separate clause addressed to this very problem. In the Sino-Soviet sample, Article 5 records the parties’ resolve, in the spirit of friendship and cooperation and in conformity with the principles of equality, mutual interest, and also mutual respect for the state sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of the other High Contracting Party—to develop and consolidate economic and cultural ties between the Soviet Union and China, to render each other every possible economic assistance, and to carry out the necessary economic cooperation.