Sovereignty and its Two Dimensions

Sovereignty is the authority to do anything in a country without being held accountable, such as making rules, enforcing and enforcing laws, collecting and impressing taxation, creating war and peace, and forming alliances and agreements with foreign nations. Sovereignty in government, on the other hand, applies to the public body that directs what each member of the partnership can do regarding the end of the relationship (Camani, 2011, P. 15). It is also the sole power by which any legal resident is governed, and there is no political superiority in the state. A sovereign state is one who can govern itself independently of any foreign influence. Sovereignty entails the combination of all power and exists in in the body of the state that fits to the societies. However, these supremacies are mostly implemented by delegation.

Sovereignty also acts as the ultimate overseer in the process of making decisions in the state as well as maintenance of order. The term was derived from the Latin word superanus and was originally meant to be equivalent to supreme power. However, when put in practice, it has often departed from its initial meaning (Camani, 2011, P. 35). Despite the fact that the doctrine of sovereignty has had a significant impact on progress and growth within different states, its greatest influence is apparent in the relations among the various states. Sovereign is not bound by laws and cannot be responsible for anybody as well. However, to some extent, the sovereign is obliged to observe some ground rules that are derived from the law about its citizens.

Dimensions of Sovereignty

Internal Sovereignty

It also refers to a formal sovereignty and characterizes the sincere power of state or indigenous government to create and administer policies within their influence. A country that has core freedom is one in which the administration has been chosen by the publics and has to possess the prevalent legality (International Commission on Intervention, 2001, P. 18). It exercises complete power over all characters or associations of persons within a given state. Internal sovereignty issues guidelines to all men and groups in its area and accepts commands from none of them and does not always subject to any limitation of any kind. Internal sovereignty can also refer to the situation in which an individual or organization does not have any challenge to its laws and views within its geographical jurisdiction. The power is unchallenged by any entity within the geographical dispensation in question.

External Sovereignty

The country is subject to no other power and is sovereign of any form of coercion of other countries. Each autonomous state had the power to relinquish trade accords as well as indulging into military agreements. Each state that possesses external sovereignty is self-governing of other countries, and every state that is independent is at freedom to decide its foreign policies and join any union of authority it pleases (International Commission on Intervention, 2001, P. 27). Similarly, any state does not have any right to tamper with external issues of a country that is independent. Therefore, foreign sovereignty is an indication that every state is independent of other nations. It means political freedom that demonstrates the sovereignty of the modern states.

Civilianization of the State

Civilianization entails the replacement of the fully confirmed, sworn police officers with civilian staffs who have no police authorities or limited police powers and have the capacity to provide functional or administrative support to the police officers. The concept is not new in policing as it dates back to 1980s whereby managerial approaches were being applied in the policing community due to demand for specialized skills (Crank, 1989, P. 169). The civilianization concept was mainly adopted in England and Wales where the workforce in civilian grew substantially through the 1980s and had expanded significantly to 2000 with the growth of extended police family ideology. Many policing organizations have modified staffing to replace personnel who are sworn with the civilians to feel numerous support positions in the police. The trend is aimed to continue in management roles to capture advantages of efficiency in job and cost effectiveness. The next step of civilianization might involve outsourcing of various policing tasks to private agencies that are better suited for work (Crank, 1989, P. 172).

In most cases, civilian positions in law enforcement have been relegated to tasks such as dispatch, records, forensics among other duties. However, the contemporary society calls for more than that due to fiscal constraints in the economy. Instead of hiring, training and waiting until the recruits in sworn ranks as expertise, the workload should be offloaded to professionals that are better suited to do the work. The move will not only be cost effective but beneficial concerning operations (Crank, 1989, P 174). The success of future law enforcers including the military highly relies on civilianizing of key roles and functions through outsourcing technological approach and investigative task. For instance, human resource civilian that is professionally trained will assume the position with ultimate responsibility and interest as well as apply the specific knowledge needed to handle the job. They will have interest and satisfaction since they have personally selected and trained for the profession. There will also no rotation in the assignment compared to their sworn in counterparts hence will establish their stability within the organization and will provide fewer opportunities for mistakes during the transitional learning process (Crank, 1989, P. 175).

Consolidation of Rule

The first phase of consolidation of control took place largely between twelfth and seventeenth centuries (Carbone and Memoli, 2015, P. 8). The first phase saw a decreasing number of various political systems with extending their control over the larger portion of Europe. Each system typically broadens the national reach and monopolized other centers. The political platform becomes simpler because each center practices rule in a manner that is increasingly uniform over a large territory. Sometimes the approach is peaceful because two dynasties leading different parts of Europe would marry and national wealth of one spouse becomes consolidated to that one of the other. Nevertheless, consolidation is mostly a result of conflicts between two centers over which was fit to control which territory. Such conflicts are mostly settled by war followed by the winner conquering part or all of the loser's territory (Carbone and Memoli, 2015, P. 15).

However, initiating war requires financial muscle to organize the resources, the troops, hardware as well as deploying the troops against the opponents. In many occasions, military with larger armies and fleets are capable of waging war over more than one front and become internally distinct into services and performs separate military tasks. Such kind of armies and fleets can only be afforded by rulers who have the ability to martial greater resources which will, in turn, enable raising troops from larger populations as they tap the wealth produced from the conquered territory (Camani, 2011, P. 24).

Therefore, the premium on size is a strong encouragement to consolidation. When weapons do not take part in the accumulation of wealth, then resources of different nature will come to play. Political leaders embrace consolidation rule in the call for peace which is the recurrent process in the history of the European continent and is regularly championed by religious leaders (Camani, 2011, P. 42). Each center will tend to prove its capability by establishing control over a larger territory hence bringing rivalry between countries of lesser power to an end. Diplomatic actions, coalitions, and alliances or the intention to isolate the opponents is or make them accept subordination is then considered. Military activities are also required to produce rules of its own that seeks to regulate the aspects of relations between different states. The law also makes the likelihood of conflicts over territory impossible by putting down clear principles into the succession of seats that are left vacant (Camani, 2011, P. 47).

Socially Constructed Nations

Social constructions of a nation entail concepts such as race, ethnicity and the nation itself. Race is a social construction that is used to categorize human beings from biologically transmitted characters that are thought to be socially significant. In historical perspective, the reason behind categorization has been to legitimize inequalities of power to create an order in which some people in the society are powerful and dominant. The race concept has deeply affected the formation of identity (Campbell, 2000, P. 76). Ethnicity, on the other hand, is socially constructed based on historical representations of people in the society. Ethnicity provides people with both the sense of inclusion and exclusion from one group to another. It is determined by social interaction of individuals through the use of symbols, and the symbols represent an identity of an individual within part of a particular group.

Social constructions of nations refer to the basic structures of international politics that are social and not materialistic in nature. It also relays the structures that do not only demonstrate behavior but define actors as well as identifying their interests. However, people within a country that are socially constructed have the historical memory that strengthens the sovereign bonds. Myths or origins and shared history provide the individual with the impression that the nation is eternal and the cultural attributes alongside values that existed before will help the person through in a nation (Campbell, 2000, P. 93).

Social identities are useful in defining the structure of social structures among various nations. In this respect, European Union serves as an outstanding example that explains the concept of social construction. Social identities play the critical role in defining the structure of social development of nations. EU in the context of social construction should be agreed as a sanctuary civic that is defined by definite rehearses and denotations that are shared. It, therefore, indicates that nations are socially constructed through group and duplicate of characteristics as well sharing of collective understandings that are divergent (Campbell, 2000, P. 115).

The concept of social construction among nations has been the primary challenge of neoliberal ideologies. Social construction focuses on the interpretation of the world by individual agents such as counties and the definition alters over time as various individuals relate with each other. It does not let go the authenticity or the importance of secular states but explores how these countries as a bearing on the actions of people and their identities. Apart from economic wealth, population size, military prowess is also significant (Campbell, 2000, P. 101).





References

Carbone, G. and Memoli, V., 2015. Does Democratization Foster State Consolidation? Democratic Rule, Political Order, and Administrative Capacity. Governance, 28(1), pp.5-24.

Crank, J.P., 1989. Civilianization in small and medium police departments in Illinois, 1973–1986. Journal of Criminal Justice, 17(3), pp.167-177.

Caramani, D., 2011. Comparative politics. Oxford University Press.

Campbell, D., 2000. The socially constructed organization. Karnac Books.

International Commission on Intervention, State Sovereignty and International Development Research Centre (Canada), 2001. The responsibility to protect: report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Idrc.