Topic 4.9 Notes – Challenges to Sovereignty

What Challenges to Sovereignty Are

A challenge to sovereignty does not usually mean a state disappears. It means the central government no longer has total freedom to act alone.

• Sovereignty = a state's authority over territory, population, laws, and foreign policy.
• Authority can shift downward to states, provinces, or regions.
• Authority can shift upward to supranational organizations like the EU or UN.
• The two main processes here are devolution and supranationalism.

The APHG idea to keep in your head is that sovereignty is often shared, limited, or redistributed. A national government might still control defense, but a region could control schools, language policy, or transportation. Power can exist at the local, regional, national, and international scales at the same time.

Political, economic, cultural, and technological changes can all create these challenges.

Devolution and State Breakup

Devolution is the transfer of power from the central government to regional or local governments. States do this to manage diversity, reduce conflict, or give regions more self-rule.

Devolved powers often include:

• education and language policy
• policing
• taxation
• transportation
• social services

Devolution can calm separatism, but it can also strengthen it by giving a region its own institutions and identity.

Spain

Spain's 1978 constitution created 17 autonomous communities.
The most tested examples are Catalonia and the Basque Country, where strong regional-national identities never disappeared.

• Catalonia held an independence referendum in 2017.
• Spain declared it unconstitutional.
• The key distinction is autonomy is not independence.

Belgium

Belgium devolved power because of language divisions.

• Flanders = Dutch-speaking
• Wallonia = French-speaking
• Brussels = bilingual
• Small German-speaking area in the east

Belgium's federal system includes both regions and language communities, which shows that devolution can be built around culture as well as territory.

Canada

Canada shows how a strong cultural identity can be concentrated in one subnational unit.

• Quebec is the center of French language and identity.
• Sovereignty referendums happened in 1980 and 1995.
• Both failed, so Quebec stayed in Canada.

Nigeria

Nigeria has a federal system with 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory.
Creating more states helped reduce the dominance of major ethnic regional blocs. This is a good example of devolution being used to preserve unity in a very diverse state.

Secession and disintegration

Devolution can go farther than autonomy.

• Secession = a region leaves a state and becomes independent.
• Disintegration = a whole state breaks into multiple sovereign states.

South Sudan is a clear example of secession that produced a new independent state.

Sudan and South Sudan

• South Sudan became independent in 2011 after civil war and a referendum. This is secession/partition.
• The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 into 15 independent states. Internal republic borders became international borders. This is state disintegration.

Communication Technology and Democratization

Technology changes sovereignty because it makes organizing across distance much easier.

• Regional and separatist movements can spread messages fast.
• People can coordinate protests, elections, and referendums.
• Diasporas can support movements from abroad.
• International audiences can see state repression quickly.

Technology also helps supranational cooperation because states and organizations can negotiate, share information, and coordinate more easily.

Democratization means movement toward broader participation, competitive elections, civil liberties, and accountability.

The classic example is the Arab Spring in 2010-2011. Social media and mobile phones helped organize protests and publicize dissent. The important caveat is that technology helped mobilization, but it did not guarantee successful democratization.

States also use technology for surveillance, censorship, and propaganda, so its effects go both ways.

Supranationalism and Why States Join

Supranationalism means states cooperate through organizations above the national scale and accept some common rules.

States join for four big reasons:

1. Transnational problems
   Climate change, pandemics, terrorism, refugees, pollution, and shared waterways cross borders.
2. Economies of scale
   Larger markets and pooled resources can lower costs and increase bargaining power.
3. Trade agreements
   States lower tariffs and accept common rules, but lose some freedom over economic policy.
4. Military alliances
   Collective defense improves security, but creates obligations.

The tradeoff is simple. States give up some independence to gain security, efficiency, influence, or market access.

Major Supranational Organizations

The EU is the strongest example because it places the most direct limits on sovereignty. The map below highlights EU member states across Europe. Some members use the euro, and many participate in Schengen. Brexit matters because the UK voted to leave in 2016 and officially left in 2020, showing a state trying to reclaim sovereignty from a supranational body.

European Union member states