Sovereignty (souveraineté, maiestas) — Supreme power, in principle not subordinate to any other within a political community; a founding concept of the modern theory of the state. The word derives from medieval Latin superanus (“the one above”), through French souverain. Its first systematic formulation is due to Jean Bodin in the Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576), who defines it as the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth, whose principal mark is the capacity to make law without depending on anyone else’s consent. In Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), sovereignty is the indivisible power instituted by covenant to secure peace, and the sovereign is not a party to the contract and so cannot be bound by it. In Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762), sovereignty belongs to the people, is inalienable and indivisible, and is exercised as the general will; the doctrine of popular sovereignty underlies modern republican and democratic regimes. Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws, 1748) counters such concentration with the separation of powers. In the twentieth century Carl Schmitt (Political Theology, 1922) declared: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” shifting the focus from law to the decision that suspends it. Foucault, in turn, distinguishes sovereign power, centered on the right “to make die or to let live,” from biopower. In the international sphere, state sovereignty is customarily associated with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), although historians dispute that it actually established the principle. See Hobbes, Rousseau, Carl Schmitt, and social contract.
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