What is Sovereignty?*

Alain de Benoist
The concept of sovereignty is one of the most complex in political science, with many definitions, some totally contradictory.1 Usually, sovereignty is defined in one of two ways. The first definition applies to supreme public power, which has the right and, in theory, the capacity to impose its authority in the last instance. The second definition refers to the holder of legitimate power, who is recognized to have authority. When national sovereignty is discussed, the first definition applies, and it refers in particular to independence, understood as the freedom of a collective entity to act. When popular sovereignty is discussed, the second definition applies, and sovereignty is associated with power and legitimacy.
1. Translated by Julia Kostova from “Qu’est-ce que la souveraineté? in Éléments, * No. 96 (November 1999), pp. 24-35. 1. Cf. Charles Merriam, History of the Theory of Sovereignty since Rousseau (New York: Columbia University Press, 1900); Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolute State (London: New Left Books, 1974); Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Bertrand de Jouvenel, De la souveraineté (Paris: Génior, 1955); In Defense of Sovereignty, ed. by W. J. Stankiewicz (London: Oxford University Press, 1969); Joseph Camillieri and Jim Falk, The End of Sovereignty? (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1992); A. H. Chayes, The New Sovereignty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995); State Sovereignty as Social Construct, ed. by Thomas J. Biersteker and C. Weber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Bertrand Badie, Un monde sans souveraineté. Les États entre ruse et responsabilité (Paris: Fayard, 1999). Discussion of this subject has become so confused that the notion of sovereignty tends to lose its political character, as is the case with Patricia Mishe, who claims that only the earth is sovereign. (“Ecological Security and the Need to Reconceptualize