What is sovereignty? In modern politics and international relations, this definition is immensely common. Diplomats, deputies, various statesmen in search of popularity and their frivolities with the people periodically turn to this concept. More often it pops up when it comes to relations between Russia and neighboring states: Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Kazakhstan and others. In order not to get confused, let's try to understand the details of what sovereignty is.
The essence of the concept
The concept of sovereignty implies the right to the highest political power over anything and the independence of one’s actions from any external forces. That is, in this case, what is the sovereignty of the state? This is the political and legal ability of state power to freely and completely in its interests act in domestic and foreign policy. Political scientists distinguish between two types of state sovereignty. Internal, which expresses the absolute fullness of government over all state systems, its monopoly over the legislative, executive and judicial powers. External: denotes the independence and equality of state representatives in the international arena, the inadmissibility of interference by other states in foreign affairs. Having answered the first question about what is sovereignty, we will understand some of its varieties. Since this concept can extend both to public education, and specifically to the national organism.
National sovereignty
Today, international law distinguishes the concept of not only state, but also national and people's sovereignty. The idea of national sovereignty took shape during the nineteenth century, the period of the birth of nations proper in their modern sense. Mass national movements for the independence of peoples that do not have it (in the nineteenth century - Poles, Czechs, Hungarians; at the dawn of the twentieth - Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Irish and others) pushed the world socio-political thought to the belief that every nation has the right to gain absolute political freedom from other nations and the creation of their own state. Through its own state, any nation realizes its highest aspirations and ambitions in all historical aspects. In modern international law, this essence is expressed by the phrase that each
a nation has the right to self-determination. However, an unresolved conflict arises to this day in international law, since this principle comes with another principle - the inviolability of existing borders.
Popular sovereignty
The concept of popular sovereignty was born somewhat earlier than national. It arose along with the ideas of the French Enlightenment about democratic, not monarchical power. Actually, it is precisely the fact that the people are the source and bearer of the supreme power in the state, and the elected government is only its tool, and it is assumed when we talk about popular sovereignty.
