Battison's Blog

The word sovereignty basically means power and/or authority. It’s etymology is rooted in a variety of sources, and hence it gives a variety of opportunities for interpretation. Religious men, together with absolutists, have often throughout history said that the ultimate source of sovereignty can only be the ultimately virtuous and powerful i.e. God. Hobbes implied that power lies where it must. Indeed one of the major criticisms of Hobbes, coming from Locke, Rousseau and Mill, was that his work implied we must give up all rights of judgement to the sovereign power. In other words for Hobbes sovereignty was about power, plain and simple. If you lost it then there was a ground for revolution, but not before. For Locke sovereignty was vested in the people, as many people would say it should be today. And for Rousseau it lay not with the people themselves but rather the general will of the people. For the latter one could point to the written constitution as a modern example of that will being written down and made available for interpretation by specialists. Although his argument was also claimed by many of the twentieth century fascists.

Where do you think sovereignty should lie in a political entity? Who or what should hold the right to be the legitimate source of authority for all political decisions?