Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / November 13, 2021
By Florencia Ucha, in May. 2009
The term sovereignty is a word that with the passage of time and the political and social changes that took place in that period was acquiring new connotations and scope, for this The reason is that there is no single and universal reference to the term, but it will be necessary to specify how it evolved through the centuries to have a complete idea of what it implies today in day.
The first and most classic definition about the term sovereignty was given in the 16th century by Jean Bodin in his famous work The Six Books of the Republic, there Bodin said about sovereignty that it was the absolute and perpetual power of a Republic. Later, in the 18th century, in the anteroom of the French Revolution that so many changes brought about in the matter politics, the French thinker Rousseau said about it and adding a really substantial change to it, that sovereignty happened to be represented by the very people of that Republic that Bodin spoke before. Sovereignty then gives rise to power, citizen that alienates his rights in favor of the authority in force, contributing not only to creating authority but also committing to obey it in any way.
Rousseau breaks with the belief firmly established that sovereignty resided in a single and specific person, who and from whom, as history repeatedly demonstrated opportunities, was responsible for incredible abuses and passes the ball to the general will or the people who will go on to embody power and take the decisions.
But this conception a little more open and that influenced what would be the democracy modern, it was also the ideal setting for a lot of criminalities to develop, shielded behind the popular will. Faced with this state of affairs, the position of Sieyes arises who tried to amend this situation and Then he introduced another definition that posited that sovereignty does not reside in the people but more in the Nation, that is, the decision-making power or authority will not only go through what is proposed by the majority will, but also take into account the historical legacy and cultural of a certain nation.
From this that we comment, then, it follows that sovereignty refers to the exercise of power and who embodies it in a certain place in the world and that three are its main component elements: power, the people and the territory.
Issues in Sovereignty