Political Science

Today, Sovereignty Is More Respected and Also More Encroached Upon Than Ever Before
It is a widely held belief that the conditions that support globalism conspire to undermine state and territorial boundaries and permit cultural and scientific exchange. Even though sovereignty confronts the challenge of regionalization and globalism, it is more respected and encroached upon than ever before. Globalization does not imply the demise of sovereignty but rather it implies change. Sovereignty may be reinforced as it goes through changes in order to meet new requirements and opportunities. In some respects, sovereignty may be restricted in its capacity to deny international responsibilities and domestic obligation. In this paper, I seek to defend the position that sovereignty is more respected and more encroached upon in the twenty first century ever since nations and states came to existence.
There are two distinct realms through which the concept of sovereignty emerged. These are internal and external dimensions of sovereignty. The internal aspect encompasses the idea that an individual or political entity founded as sovereign exercises rightly the supreme command over that society. The government enjoys the final and absolute authority within a given territory. The second dimension involves the claim that no final and absolute authority exists beyond and above a sovereign state. States must be conceived as autonomous in all aspects of internal politics and should therefore be free in principle to determine their own course within the framework. External sovereignty is a quality possessed by political societies in their relationship to one another. It is linked with a communitys aspiration to determine its own course and politics without any interference from other powers.
The system of sovereign states came to be entrenched in a complexity of rules that saw their evolution from the seventeenth century to safeguard the concept of an order of states as an international society of sovereign states. The birth of a community of states corresponded with a new conception of international law referred to as the Westphalian Regime after the 1648 peace treaties. The Westphalian regime encompasses the period of international law and regulations from sixteen forty eight to early 20th Century. However, not all of its characteristics were intrinsic to Westphalia settlement. Instead, they were established through a normative trajectory in international law that did not realize its complete articulation until late 18th and early 19th centuries when territorial sovereignty became the fundamental principles of international society.
Condition of classic sovereignty
The classic sovereignty regime foregrounds the establishment of a world order whereby states are nominally free and equal with supreme authority being enjoyed over all objects and subjects within a specific territory, establish separate and distinct political orders based on their own interests, involve themselves in diplomatic activities even though of restricted measures of cooperation, acknowledge no authority above themselves, and embrace the principle of effectiveness. There is no time in history where states have fully enjoyed such elements of sovereignty than in the twenty first century.
The establishment of the classic regime of sovereignty was in reality compromised, messy and fraught. However, recognizing the complexity of historical reality should not compel us to overlook the systematic and structural changes that occurred from the late 16th century in the principles that underlie political order and their imminent bloody reality. There was struggle going on within states to contain and manage territory, people, and resources. The state formation in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries and the sudden formation of colonies by European powers in the nineteenth century are good examples of this. There is need to emphasize on four critical corollaries to the establishment of the classic regime of sovereignty. First, the heads of government or states were conferred the capacity to be involved in making agreements with the representatives of other states without regarding the constitutional standing of such individuals. In other words, there was not much regard of whether particular national legal arrangement entitled the head of state to commit the state to given treaty rights and duties. Secondly, interstate law did not embrace the kind of national political organization. What was accepted was a de facto approach to government and state. All kinds of government or state whether a constitutional monarchy, dictatorships or liberal democracies were considered as legitimate types of polity in equal measure. 
Thirdly, there was the establishment of a disjuncture between international affairs and the organizing principles of national and international affairs. The ethical and political rules that governed these two principles were divergent both in principle and in practice. With the West slowly became entrenched with liberal democratic states, a political world that was tolerant to democracy in nation states and non-democratic relationships among states also became entrenched. Democratic legitimacy and accountability were also entrenched inside the boundaries of the state and the quest of reasons of state beyond such boundaries.
Finally, there was delegitimation of groups and non-state actors that attempted to contest territorial boundaries with paradoxical consequences. Such groups did not have any alternative apart from resorting to coercion and armed force with the aim of pressing their claims so as to secure their homeland having been robbed of their traditional territories and habitat by colonial powers. In order to have any hopes of being recognized internationally, they had to establish control over particular areas as their territory.
The condition of sovereignty today
The European empires defeat and retreat from the final decades of the nineteenth century, the rapid spread of democratic ideas in every corner of the world during the twentieth century, and the creation of new multilateral and transnational kinds of organizations and the occurrences of the past century have changed and shaped sovereignty.
Governments and individuals have been placed under new systems of regulations that are in principle indifferent to the boundaries of the state. This is a remarkable indicator of the progress that has been made since the classic state centered conception of sovereignty to what can be seen as a new framework for the delimitation of political power globally. Liberal international sovereignty firmly establishes constraints and powers in international law that transcend state boundaries and can at times come into conflict and contradiction with national laws. Within this formulation, states may surrender claims to sovereignty if the standards and values ingrained in the liberal international order are violated. Such violations are no longer issues of morality alone but have become a breach of legal code which may call for the need and means to challenge, prosecute and rectify it. A bridge has been established to this end between law and morality that hitherto was not in existence if not as a stepping stone. They are transformative alterations that have changed the content and form of politics on the national, regional and global scale. They symbolize the expanding normative reach, widening scope and growing institutionalization of international legal rules and practices. It is the beginning of a universal constitutional order whereby the state ceases to be the only layer of legal competence to which individuals have given public powers.
    However, there is need for a qualification so as to avoid any form of miscomprehension. Liberal international sovereignty does not weaken the state in its global and regional affairs. International laws intensification and the furthering of the scope of human rights instruments do not symbolize the erosion of the powers of the state or its demise. In many respects, the undergoing changes represents the stretching of the classic liberal concern of defining and the proper scope, form and limits of the state against the opportunities, processes and flow of civil life. In the widening of the delimitation of public powers, the competencies and capacities of the state are being reconfigured and not being eroded.
The changing structures and processes of global order and regional integration have reorganized the classic regime of sovereignty. States are now integrated into diverse and overlapping legal and political domains that can be conceived as an emerging multilayered political system. The sovereignty and autonomy of nations are now ingrained within wider frameworks of governance and law whereby states are increasingly exercising political power and authority. While this shift is in principle reversible, there are numerous significant alterations that that classic regime of state sovereignty has undergone.
    Sovereignty can no longer be comprehended in terms of classifications of untrammeled effective power. Instead, a legitimate state must be comprehended by appealing to democracy and human rights. The maintenance of democratic standards and human rights values has become associated with legitimate authority.
The four main corollaries of interstate law system is open to reevaluation at the beginning of the twenty first century, that is, the acknowledgment of the heads of state regardless of their constitutional standing, the de facto approach to sovereignty by international law, the disjuncture between the relevant rules and domestic politics organization and those that are conceived to be application within the realm of actual politics, and the refusal to confer recognition  on individuals who are forcefully challenging the existing boundaries and the established national regimes. The legitimacy of state leadership today cannot be taken for granted and just like the constitutional standing of a national polity, can be scrutinized and tested with regard to liberal democratic standards and human rights.
The gap that existed between the kinds of organizations that had been viewed to be relevant to national and transnational life has been reduced by the growth of global and regional governance with its responsibility for areas of increasing trans-border concern from health and pollution to trade and financial issues. There have also been cases in which governments having settled borders have failed to be recognized by the international community while at the same time nationalistic liberation movements have achieved new levels of respect and recognition. There are some struggles for independence that significant powers have accepted such as the Croatian struggle for nationhood before its borders could be redrawn and recast.
As much as it may be argued that sovereignty is more respected today, the moral and legal significance of interstate boundaries are decreasing. The view of states as discrete political universes is no longer held. Boundaries are being breached by international standards in numerous ways. In Europe, political authority has been divided by European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the European Union which have established new institutions and hierarchy of law and governance. Any view that sovereignty cannot be limited, is indivisible, exclusive and a perpetual form of public power embedded within an individual state is now not accepted. The order of states have been transformed and delimited within the international realm by rules that govern war, weapon system, human rights, war crimes, environment and other areas, ingraining national polities in new kinds and hierarchy of accountability and governance.
Conclusion
Today, sovereignty is more respected and also more encroached upon than ever before. Other methods of ordering political life such as empires, trusteeship, colonialism and the traditional Sino-centric system are no longer legitimate. In other words, they would either not be meaningful or a large proportion of individuals that would be subject to them would reject them. It should however be noted that the meaning of sovereignty and acts that can be directed to a sovereign nation has always been a subject of contention and ambiguity. However, sovereignty in its basic conception is more respected today than at any other point in history.