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A sovereign state is a state that has the supreme sovereignty or ultimate authority over a territory. [1] It is commonly understood that a sovereign state is independent. [2] When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may also refer to a constituent country, or a dependent territory. [3] [4] [5]
With "sovereignty" meaning holding supreme, independent authority over a region or state, "internal sovereignty" refers to the internal affairs of the state and the location of supreme power within it. [47] A state that has internal sovereignty is one with a government that has been elected by the people and has the popular legitimacy.
A state should not be confused with a government; a government is an organization that has been granted the authority to act on the behalf of a state. [22] Nor should a state be confused with a society; a society refers to all organized groups, movements, and individuals who are independent of the state and seek to remain out of its influence.
The dominant customary international law standard of statehood is the declarative theory of statehood, which was codified by the Montevideo Convention of 1933. The Convention defines the state as a person of international law if it "possess[es] the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) a capacity to enter into relations with the ...
The Westphalian system, also known as Westphalian sovereignty, is a principle in international law that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory.The principle developed in Europe after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, based on the state theory of Jean Bodin and the natural law teachings of Hugo Grotius.
The word is borrowed from Old French souverain, which is ultimately derived from the Latin superānus, meaning 'above'. The roles of a sovereign vary from monarch, ruler or head of state to head of municipal government or head of a chivalric order. As a result, the word sovereignty has more recently also come to mean independence or autonomy. [1]
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the leaders of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, who are the source of all political legitimacy. Citizens may unite and offer to delegate a portion of their sovereign powers and duties to those who wish to serve as officers of the state, contingent on the ...
While each of the state governments within the United States holds legal and administrative jurisdiction within its bounds, [3] they are not sovereign in the Westphalian sense in international law which says that each state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non ...