The Meaning of Sovereignty, and Its Extent in Contemporary Essay

The Meaning of Sovereignty, and Its Extent in Contemporary Nation-States. Sovereignty in the Asia-Pacific Region - Essay ExampleThe 21st century saw or so 200 independent states in the international community, the largest number of free states in history (Tsoundarou, 2002). The key agentive role for a state to be adjudged independent is its ability to effectively example its reign unimpeded by external or internal forces. The concept of sovereignty is generally cognize by all as the ultimate power for self-determination in a free state. It is oftentimes equated with liberty or freedom. there is general agreement as to its description sovereignty is absolute, limitless, indefeasible, inalien adequate, and indivisible (Underhill, 1808) it is qualitative or categorical, not quantifiable and therefore not capable of description in percentage terms (Weber, 2011). Ideally, sovereignty resides in the people, although the government activity exercises the sovereign act in their name. Recently, however, developments in international relations have made it necessary to distort our concept of sovereignty, in order to create workable structures among nations that better address the imperatives of globalization and international cooperation. This move posits the argument that the largely inwardly-looking concept of sovereignty being pursued by states in the Asia-Pacific region has acted as a constraint on the development of a strong regional union that would better deal their interests in a globalizing world. The predominant Westphalian sovereignty to which the Asia-Pacific nations cling is largely antithetical to the pooling of sovereignty that is a mandatory to regional unification. In this regard, the Asia-Pacific region is not prepared to meet the imperatives of globalisation. The Meaning of Sovereignty The word sovereignty has been used in so many ways that a degree of ambiguity surrounds the determination of its meaning. In fact, there have been some author s who categorically state that sovereignty is impossible to define (Uruena, 2006). To illustrate the complexness of sovereignty as a concept, a taxonomy by Stephen Krasner (1999, in Weber, 2011, p. 3 Cohan, 1995, pp.912-916 and Jackson, 2006, pp. 63-64) identified four antithetic usages (1) Domestic sovereignty, that pertains to the power structure of state political authority, as well as the degree to which simplicity is effected and imposed by this authority (2) Interdependent sovereignty, pertaining to the degree by which the political authority is able to effect the entry and egress through its borders (3) International legal sovereignty, that pertains to the recognition complianceed to other states and which other states accord it and (4) Westphalian sovereignty, that traditional form of sovereignty which excludes all foreign elements from its political processes. The general perception of sovereignty is that primeval power reserved by common consensus of nation states for the political head of that state. This began with the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, otherwise known as the Peace Treaty between the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France and their respective Allies. still of 128 clauses, the document was originally meant to contain the minute details marking the conclusion of the Thirty Years War. It includes the dispel of landholdings to the different feudal lords, with the promise not to interfere in the regime being implemented in territories other than their own. In effect, the power of the emperor founded on the claim of holy predominance was passed on to the kings and lords who exercise their own local predominance (Jackson, 2006, p. 62). This notion of the absolute right of the sovereign was eventually taken to be the