Sovereignty and the transformations of the State and Law: Leon Duguit and the existential reality of power

Abstract

The relative imprecision and instability of the concept of sovereignty find in contemporary history and in the current situation new factors of complexity and explanatory understanding. The modern state is substantially a sovereign state. The system of sovereign states was affected by a particularly serious crisis with the two great world wars. The extraordinary concentration of political-military power in the hands of supranational organizations was perceived, which significantly reduced the sovereign prerogatives of national States. At the present juncture, the process of globalization has seriously questioned the original Western conception of sovereignty and its scope. There is a widespread assertion - debatable in itself - that states are becoming “imposing” (“imposing state?”) to deal with the problems of global governance, bringing the nation-state and the theory of the modern state into crisis. But also concurring with a movement of apparently different sign, consisting of the emergence of identities, local governments and internal deconstruction of the nation-state. What seems to be emerging is the relative loss of weight, power, of the nation-state within the realm of “shared” and differentiated sovereignty that characterizes today’s world political scenario. Although a simplistic view is unacceptable, globalization is not independent of the nation-states that drive it, which has undoubtedly determined a new role for the state on the global stage. In fact, the hyperglobalization of recent decades has been deliberately driven, from the outset, by the major world power states, notably the United States. And even today there are certain undeniable trends towards a reversal of neo-liberal hyperglobalization with the return of more effective powers to the more advanced nation states and a less absorbing globalization process.