Sovereign state

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A sovereign state is a place with borders where people live, and where a government
makes laws and talks to other sovereign states. The people have to follow the laws that
the government makes and only the government is allowed to hurt people or put them in
jail. The government can do whatever it wants and doesn't have to do what other
governments tell it to do.[1] Most sovereign states are recognized which means other
sovereign states agree that it's really a sovereign state. Being recognized makes it easier
for a sovereign state to talk to and make agreements (treaties) with other sovereign states.
There are hundreds of recognized sovereign states today - see List of sovereign states.
Contents
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1 What a sovereign state is

2 Constitutive theory of statehood
3 Declarative theory of statehood
4 De facto and de jure states
5 References

What a sovereign state is[change | change source]

There is no rule to say what exactly makes a state. Usually, the things a state must have
are mainly political, not legal.[2] The Czechs and the Poles were seen as separate states
during World War I, even though they did not exist as states yet. L.C. Green explained
this by saying that "recognition of statehood is a matter of discretion, it is open to any
existing state to accept as a state any entity it wishes, regardless of the existence of
territory or an established government."[3]
This means that it is up to any state that already exists to treat any other group as a state.
This recognition can be direct or implied. When a state does this, it usually means that the
group will also be treated as a state for things that happened in the past. It does not need
to mean that the state wants to have a diplomatic relationship with the other group.
Sovereignty is a word that is often used wrongly.[4] Lassa Oppenheim said that there is no
idea whose meaning is more controversial than sovereignty. No one argues the fact that
from the time the idea of sovereignty was first used in political science until now, there
has never been one meaning that everyone agreed on.[5] Justice Evatt of the High Court of
Australia says that "sovereignty is neither a question of fact, nor a question of law, but a
question that does not arise at all." [6]
Although the word sovereignty often includes all types of government, ancient and
modern, the modern state has some links to the type of government first seen in the 15th

century, when the term "state" also first meant what it does today. Because of this, the
word is often used to refer only to modern political systems.
We often use the words "country", "nation", and "state" as if they mean the same thing;
but there is actually a difference:
A nation is a group of people who are believed to share common customs, origins,
and history. However, the adjectives national and international are used about what is
strictly asovereign state, as in national capital, international law.
A state is the government and other supporting groups of people that have
sovereignty over an area of land and population.
Because the meaning of the words has changed over time and past writers often used the
word "state" in a different ways it is difficult to say exactly what a state is. Mikhail
Bakuninused the word simply to mean a governing organization. Other writers used the
word "state" to mean any law-making or law enforcement agency. Karl Marx said that the
state was what was used by the ruling class of a country to control the rule. According to
Max Weber, the state is an organization who are the only people allowed to use violence
in a particular area.
Constitutive theory of statehood[change | change source]
Main page: Constitutive theory of statehood
In 1815 at the Congress of Vienna the Final Act only recognized 39 sovereign states in
Europe. Because of this, they said that in future new states would have to be recognized
by other states. In practice, this meant recognition by one or more of the most powerful
countries.[7]
This constitutive theory was developed in the 19th century to describe what is and is not a
state. With this theory, the need to follow international law depends on whether other
sovereign governments recognize the group. Because of this, new states could not
become part of the international community or be bound by international law
immediately, so recognized nations did not have to respect international law in their
dealings with them.[8]
One of the major criticisms of this law is the confusion that happens when some states
recognize a new group, but other states do not. Hersch Lauterpacht, one of the main
people who supported the theory, suggested that it is a state's job to grant recognition as a
possible solution. However, a state may use any set of rules when judging if they should
give recognition. Many states may only recognize another state if it will help them.[8]
Declarative theory of statehood[change | change source]
Main page: Montevideo Convention
One of the criteria most commonly used by micronations is the Montevideo Convention.
The Montevideo Convention was signed on December 26 1933 by the United
States,Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Argentina, Venezuela,

Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Panama, Bolivia, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua,

Colombia, Chile,Peru and Cuba but it never received international consensus.[9] The
Montevideo Convention has four conditions that a group "should" meet to become a
state:

a population that lives there

a set piece of land
a government
the ability to enter into relations with other states

According to this, the existence of a state does not depend upon recognition by other
states. Whether or not an group meets the conditions is decided by other states when they
decide if they are going to treat that group as a state. Usually, new states are formally
recognized by at least a few other states.[10]
De facto and de jure states[change | change source]
Most sovereign states are states de jure and de facto. This means they exist both in law
and in real life. However, sometimes states are only de jure states. This means that other
states see a group as the true government of a place where they have no actual control.
Many European states had governments-in-exile during the Second World War which still
had relations with the Allies, even though their countries were under Nazi occupation. An
example today is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which is a United Nations
observer, has bi-lateral diplomatic relations with 104 states. It has no land of its own,
only embassies and consulates.[11] Other states may have sovereignty over a place, but are
not recognized by other states, these are de facto states only. Many people agree that
Somaliland is such a state.[12][13][14][15]