Sovereignty | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within the state, as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people in order to establish a law or change existing laws. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. In international law, sovereignty is the exercise of power by a state. De jure sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization. The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin *superanus (itself a derived form of Latin super – "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spelling, which has varied since the word's first appearance in English in the 14th century, was influenced by the English word "reign". The concept of sovereignty has had multiple conflicting components, varying definitions, and diverse and inconsistent applications throughout history. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects: territory, population, authority and recognition. According to Stephen D. Krasner, the term could also be understood in four different ways: Domestic sovereignty – actual control over a state exercised by an authority organized within this state, Interdependence sovereignty – actual control of movement across the state's borders International legal sovereignty – formal recognition by other sovereign states Westphalian sovereignty – there is no other authority in the state aside from the domestic sovereign (such other authorities might be e.g. a political organization or any other external agent).

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (3)

Related units (1)

Related concepts (41)

Related lectures (5)

International law

International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognised as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for states across a broad range of domains, including war and diplomacy, economic relations, and human rights. International law differs from state-based domestic legal systems in that it is primarily, though not exclusively, applicable to states, rather than to individuals, and operates largely through consent, since there is no universally accepted authority to enforce it upon sovereign states.

United States

The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America and consisting of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations.

Montevideo Convention

The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States is a treaty signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26, 1933, during the Seventh International Conference of American States. The Convention codifies the declarative theory of statehood as accepted as part of customary international law. At the conference, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull declared the Good Neighbor Policy, which opposed U.S. armed intervention in inter-American affairs.

Writing Multilateral Trade Rules in the League of Nations

This article analyses the mechanics and the political stakes of multilateral trade negotiations in the League of Nations, in the context of the transition from empires to nation states. It examines one attempt to transfer bilateral treaty norms to a multil ...

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2021

Pointing at the Moon: the civic dimension of exhibitions

Matthew Skjonsberg

An overview of the essay 'Do It Yourself: from individual sovereignty to civic design', and a report on Taliesin apprenticeship as pertains to future museum programming. ...

2016

World politics of a space without territory

Boris Beaude, Luc Guillemot

The Internet is increasingly becoming a political place in the World whose governance is therefore changed. In fact, classical political governance mechanisms appears to be overwhelmed by the emergence of this new space and its growing impact on the redefi ...

2013

Politics and Science: Impacts and Controversies HUM-428: Science, technology and society I

Delves into the intersection of science and politics, exploring controversies and disruptions caused by scientific entities in society.

Technologies for Identity & Anonymity CS-234: Technologies for democratic society

Explores technologies for identity and anonymity, including e-ID, social media identities, and cryptographic signatures.

Mechanics: Point Mass on Cone

Covers the dynamics of a point mass moving on a cone under gravity and explores mechanical energy, angular momentum, and radial positions.