ABSTRACT
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The concept of state sovereignty emerged in mid-17th-century Europe roughly when the Treaty of Westphalia divided Europe into autonomous self-governing political units. The term state then assumed new meaning when secular authority was finally delineated from religious authority in matters of political fortune in Europe. State sovereignty established a secular framework for political thinking, one of the essential components of modernity itself. Moreover, state sovereignty contains other core elements of modernity: individuals’ implied consent to the rule of the sovereign; a representative relationship between the state sovereign and the people; and rule by rational and systematic law rather than by despotic authority. It is therefore misleading to speak of a “modern” or a “Western” understanding of state sovereignty, because the concept is, at its core, both modern and Western. Far from being a “static” concept, state sovereignty has evolved in such circumstances as Western imperialism and colonialism; the domination of the international community by the Cold War superpowers; and the emergence of such suprastate concerns as protection of human rights and of the environment. Currently state sovereignty is being challenged by the twin forces of economic globalization and the explosion of information technologies, both of which are seemingly resistant to the regulating efforts of any particular territorial state.
