POWER AND SOVEREIGNTY: THE REALIST DILEMMA

Daniel Joseph T. Pante

Abstract


Through the years the definition of power has been constantly evolving. It is among the myriad concepts of the study of politics that scholars have been persistently debating. This paper proposed that it is inadequate to conceptualize power as a single idea; rather it is composed of closely related integral parts and is manifested in each component. The paper examined these manifestations of power and how it affected state sovereignty within the framework of realism. Results showed that power is manifested in six closely related integral components; military pre-eminence, economic ascendancy, institutional weight, demographic functionality, cultural magnetism and ideological insinuation. The manifestations of power sometimes vary in each component but often times they are proportional. Sovereignty, on the other hand, is the source of legitimacy for a state to exercise its authority; it is the laws or fundamentally a state’s constitution. Any action of another state must be tested against the source of the state’s legitimacy, vice-versa. If it appends or controls regulations to existing laws, then it has an effect on sovereignty as well. The use of the different components of power, especially military in the form of intervention, economic in the form of bilateral or multilateral trade arrangements and institutional in the form of treaty stipulations affects sovereignty if it is contrary or if it appends or controls to existing state laws.

Keywords


power, sovereignty, realist, dilemma

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References


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