Sovereignty Role In Politics

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Griffiths and O’Callaghan define globalization as “the acceleration and intensification of mechanisms, processes, and activities… promoting global interdependence and perhaps, ultimately, global political and economic integration.” Globalization poses a direct threat to the concept of sovereignty, which has been central to all international diplomacy since the enactment of the Westphalian Treaty in 1648. Seyom Brown describes the treaty’s principles pertaining to sovereignty as such; “(1) the government of each country is unequivocally sovereign within its territorial jurisdiction, and (2) countries shall not interfere with another country’s domestic affairs” If sovereignty is to be exemplified in the treaty as the authority of the state to…show more content…
No nation-state participating in the global world is immune to the forces outside of its borders. Yet the Westphalian ideal of sovereignty is still central to International Diplomacy, and enforced by the UN. This is because even in a world interdependent and wrought with subordinate relationships, the concept of sovereignty still holds a symbolic role in politics, although its definition and primary aim has been altered from the Westphalian model, the concept of sovereignty still remains ineffective in combatting malovolent foreign entities. The legal-rational role of sovereignty fails to stand in the way of colonial pseudo empires such as the USA from meddling in local foreign politics. Empires that are greatly influenced by the main beneficiaries of global scale capitalism, multinational corporations. The concept of sovereignty is used by major economic powers to advance the interests of their political elite. The role of sovereignty in the modern day predominately acts as a cover for empires rather than a defence of subordinated third-world…show more content…
A central part of the UN’s solution was to recognize and protect the sovereignty of all states. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter reads as follows: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” This credo basically claims that any member of the UN should refrain from interfering with the sovereignty of another state. There is however, a key exception. In the last point of this article, is that any members should refrain from using force to impose on a nations sovereignty unless it is consistent with the purposes of the United Nations. The purposes of which were directed with the aim of upholding human rights when the United Nations General Assembly ratified The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This challenges Westphalian sovereignty, adding to it a responsibility of the sovereign powers to uphold the ‘human rights’ of its population. Albeit open to interpretation, The Declaration of Human Rights set the legal groundwork for an International justice of sorts. This cosmopolitan ideal later develops into the Rome Statute of 1998 and eventually gives the International Criminal Court (ICC) the power and legal authority to try future war

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