Tuesday, August 4, 2020

Book Review: “Erkab Ena Menber” (እርካብ ና መንበር)
Assefa A. Lemu        3-13-19
Prologue: The book titled “Erkab Ena Menber”(እርካብ ና መንበር ) was written in Amharic language by DRAZ and published in 2017. The book has four parts and seven chapters. The author used penname called DRAZ (ዲራአዝ) and there is a widely held postulation that this name is acronym representing the names of the author and the names of his family members: Deborah (daughter), Rakeb (daughter),Abiy (the author), and Zinash (wife). In the Commemoration section of the book, the author said the book serves as attribute to Tizita and Zinaye, who are the sources of his life and love. These two women are assumed to be his mother and wife respectively. Therefore, all the circumstantial evidences show that the writer of the book is the current Chairman of EPRDF and Prime Minister of Ethiopia Dr. Abiy Ahmed and believed by many that way. Even though I am not aware that this assumption has been denied or rebutted by Dr. Abiy, in this review, I respect the choice of the author and call him either by the name on the book (DRAZ) or refer to him simply as “the author”, or “the writer”, or “he”.
The Title of the Book- The title of the book (ErkabEnaMenber) (Stirrup and Throne) is the good choice to reflect the content of the book. According to the online Abyssinica Dictionary,Erkab (እርካብ) is defined as supporter of a rider's feet, stirrup(ወደ ኮርቻ ላይ ለመውጣት በእግር አውራ ጣት ረግጦ የሚወጣበት ርካብ (ረከበ ወጣ))and member (መንበር) is defined as royal seat, monarch's chair, throne, political seat, chair of monarch or bishop, power, rank, and privileges of a monarch (መቀመጫ የታቦት ዙፋን ጠረጴዛ ወይም ወንበር (ነበረ ተቀመጠ መንበር)). In a nutshell, the book is about where to step and how to ascend to power and be there.
Preface: In the preface (pages xi-xiii), the author mentioned that Ethiopia has thousands of years of history and civilization. However, he didn’t tell us how many thousand years and from which year the counting of that thousands starts. He argues that Ethiopia’s situation got from bad to worse because of misguided political and economic policies and accuses the past governments of Ethiopia which he said brought catastrophe to the country. He blames the current generation for failing to be like their fathers and forefathers. He tried to set the stage by portraying Ethiopia of the past as civilized and glorious than the current one.
Introduction:In the introduction part of the book (pages xv-xix), the author provided the definitions of the two words (Erkab and Menber) he used for the title of the book. These definitions are similar with the definitions given above. He stressed the importance of stepping upon stirrup to get the desiredpower. He discussed about the importance of power and argued that political, economic, and social powers are the key engines and instruments to have an authority. Power comes before leadership and leadership uses power to achieve objectives. Regarding exercising power, he said, there are two extreme leadership types and gave an examples of these two opposite extremes—Hitler and Idi Amin on one extreme and Gandhi and Mandela on the other

In this section, the author also explained about the objective of the book which is to discuss about power and authority, to list the threats and callsof our era, to get away from entrapment politics and exercise politics which is free of partisanship and dogmatic political ideology. He arguesthat Ethiopia’s situation is going from bad to worse (kedituwedematu) and the country is sinking in the sea of darkness. He sees today’s Ethiopia as a country whose light became dim, whose body temperature became cold, and a destitute country bent like a bow with problems. To change this situation, he advises the current generation to get prepared to be servant leaders.
PART ONE: Part one of the book starts with a quote “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them” by Albert Einstein. This calls for a change in the way we think and the way we do things. To achieve positive results, the change should be progressive not regressive; for a better not for worse. The attempt to take Ethiopia backward in the name of “Ethiopian renaissance” or “ making Ethiopia great again” widen the gap between peoples in Ethiopia rather than narrowing it and we can’t solve the problems of Ethiopia which the author listed with the level of thinking that created them and that wishes to take the country backward. Therefore, the quotation he used and the argument he made do not support each other.
1.      Chapter One (Facing the Threat and Call of the Epoch): In this chapter (pages 2-15), the author repeated his argument about Ethiopia having thousands of years of history. We are not sure if he is equating the current Ethiopia with Axumite Kingdom or Abyssinia or really talking about the current Ethiopia because he didn’t tell us when the country called Ethiopia was established with a defined territory, people called Ethiopian citizens, and central government. These are important factors to define a country as a country. He argues that our knowledge is the source of our problems rather than being solution to our problems. According to the author, religious and ethnic based conflicts in today’s Ethiopia are led by educated and degree holder Ethiopians.

In this chapter, the author listed major threats or problems that our world has including conflicts, terrorism, extremism, poverty, migration, child mortality, and computer virus and argues that these threats lead the people into despair which in turn led to the election of individuals like President Donald Trump. According to the writer, our world is in the darkness before the dawn and in labor to give birth to an inevitable change.
2.      Chapter Two (Heroism, Adventurous Cruelty, and Adventurous Sincerity): In this chapter (pages 17-26), the author discussed about the meanings of heroism and adventurism. He says, in most societies, heroism is associated with killing. He refers to Alexander the Great to explain heroism, to Adolf Hitler to explain adventurous cruelty and to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandel to explain adventurous sincerity. He said Ethiopia had many adventurous cruel and adventurous sincere leaders and individuals, and listed some of them in chapter four of the book.
PART TWO: Power comes before a leader; power to be practical, it shall wait for a Leader
3.      Chapter Three (Power and Authority): In this chapter three (pages 28-45), the author discusses about the lust for power and authority. He discusses the love Emperors Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, Menelik II, and Hailesellassie I had for power and how they put their own interests for power and authority above the interest of the country. He mentioned Emperor Yohannes IV whom he said cooperated with the British forces that killed Emperor Tewodros II as an example.
By referring to Holy Bible and Nichol Machiavelli’s book, The Prince, he mentioned that human beings are naturally not thankful for what have been done for them and emphasizes on the importance of using “stick” than love to be revered. He also discusses about the importance of having double personalities- the visible and concealed personalities. He says, the leader should use visible personality to win the support of the people in good times and should use the concealed personality when there are revolts or treasons. He says, if the choice of immersing one’s hands either into water or fire is given to an individual, no reasonable person can choose to immerse his or her hands into a fire; no one would like to wake up the sleeping devil against him or her.
In this chapter he also discusses the need to be shrewd, to keep one’s plan for power in secrete, and navigate carefully to take power and get authority because power and authority cannot be attained easily. This reminded me Sun Tszu’s advice in his Art of War which says “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” This strategy worked for some of the leaders. For example, as Dr. Abiy himself told us on public television, he had been planning for a long time to become a head of government of Ethiopia (Prime Minister) and he kept that plan in secret (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTMA4jvFp78&t=5s). However, he advised others not to hide their plan to take power. This is also another strategy to know who is who and to know who is planning to do what.
The author listed some of the strategies and tactics that help to defeat enemies/opponents, to take power and authority, and stay in power and authority.
These are:
a.       To win over your opponents by generating new ideas and to make them come to your side;
b.      If your opponent is not submitting to your ideas, design alternative strategy;
c.       Bark on your opponents like a dog and give them a way to escape/ to go away;
d.      Set a hidden trap for your opponent and make sure it is defeated for once and for all to the extent it will not come back again and bother you;
e.       People are selfish. Therefore, use bait (enticement benefits) to take them where you want and then throw them away;
f.        Get your objectives implemented through diplomatic ways;
g.       Put pressure on your opponent to accept your terms and conditions;
h.      Build your capacity and get ready to face problems coming from your opponents;
i.         Get your objectives implemented using legal system;
j.         Use coercive force as needed.
He also discussed about the use of power and authority in general and mentioned that in some countries, especially in developing countries, the provisions written in the constitution are simply to give cover for the actions of the government.—in realty, law enforcement institutions and religious institutions are horses thatgovernments ride.
4.      Chapter Four (Power and Authority in Ethiopia):The writer started this chapter (pages 47-73) by repeating again the stereotype of three thousand years history of Ethiopia, the number that never changes over years. He discussessource and usage of power and authority in Ethiopia. He explained that the group which came to power through the support of military and religion claimed that its linage is connect to King Solomon of Israel and anointed by God. It made the God fearing people to obey without resistance.He argues that the followers of kingship system intentionally divided the people and led them to war along ethnic and religious lines and divided them along class lines.
The author also discussed the attemptsto change adventurous cruel actions to adventurous sincere actions by praising adventurous cruel actions in music, literatures, books, over the radios and televisions, by presenting cruel actions as genuine and sincere actions, and by feeding poisons coated with honey to this generation.
The author criticizes the killing of the officials of Hailesellassie’s government by the leaders of the 1961 coup.He argues that the action of the leaders of the coup pushed Hailesellassie who had previous experience in killing his opponents like Lij Iyasu Michael and Belay Zeleke to kill the leaders of the coup including General Mengistu Neway.He argues that Ethiopian political history is full of adventurous cruel actions and this is deeply rooted in the culture of the Ethiopian peoples who praise the killers and territorials like lion. He used the commendationthat some individuals give to Emperor Tewodros and the cruel actions he perpetrated against his opponents/enemies including burning them alive, cutting their hands, legs, tongues, ears, throwing them off the cliff, killing them by chopping with knife, and denying the families of the victims the right to mourn for their loved ones. He said Derg got the experience of killing opponents and depriving the families of the victims the right to mourn from Emperor Tewodros.
The writer presented Emperor Tewodros as a representative of adventurous cruel leaders and argued that the claim which says Emperor Tewodros worked to unit Ethiopia doesn’t hold water because the person who was left without supporters because of his cruel behavior could not be a unifier. He also rejected the excuses of the spirit of the time when Tewodros committed these cruel actions which are unacceptable by any standard at any era,presentation of the death of his wife as a cause of change in his behavior,and the good job he did in building canon. He argues these are simply futile attempts to change adventurous cruelness to adventurous sincerity.
The writer also presented Emperors Hailesellassie and Menelik II as well as Colonel Mengistu as other examples of adventurous cruel leaders of Ethiopia and argued that adventurous cruelness and adventurous sincerity are two sides of a coin and explained that the Ethiopian leaders whom he said adventurous cruel leaders were also adventurous sincere leaders. He also strongly advocated for the unity of Ethiopia and its peoples.
PART THREE: Those who will be leaders start their leadership role today
5.      Chapter Five (To use Power and Authority You Must be True Leader): In this chapter five (pages 78-119), the author identified three most important characteristic of a leader in a top government power-- 1) to generate useful ideas, 2) taking the interest of the country and citizens as a center of its actions, and 3) informed decision making. The author provided long list of what he believes the characteristics of good leader:
a)     To love the people he leads;
b)     To be governed by principles;
c)      To avoid procrastination;
d)     To generate new ideas and to be a person whom others like to follow;
e)     To win the trust of others including supervisors;
f)       To have a vision and to believe in one’s vision;
g)     To choose a right place where to be a leader;
h)     Networking and recruiting supporters;
i)       Knowing who is who and what to get from who;
j)       To be capable, to be ready to learn and to excel;
k)     To be likable;
l)       To know one’s strengths and weaknesses;
m)   To get out of your comfort zone;
n)     To mobilize supporters and be in the driver’s seat ;
o)     To make your speeches convincing and refrain from criticizing others unnecessarily;
p)     Be visible, use media to sell your ideas and to advertise your achievements;
q)     To show love, compassion, and concern to others to attract them;
r)      To know the timing and the limit;
s)      Consider alternatives; life has many choices;
t)       To know yourself, your talent, and to listen to your gut feeling or intuition;
u)     Self-control
v)     To know the right alignment;
w)   To build self-confidence- know what to do and what not to do;
x)     To be inclusive;
y)     To have integrity;
z)      Ability to plan and to follow up the implementation of the plan.
On pages 110- 119, the writer tells us Nasrudin’s story of “Lamp and the Key”, discusses pieces of disconnected issues such as neo-colonialism,transnational, companies, film industries, liberal journalism, developmental journalism, and other issues not related with the topic of the chapter. These 10 pages affected the flow and quality of the book.
6.      Chapter Six (A Prophet is Not Honored in His Own Country; Great Leader is Not Always Loved by His People ): The author used the expression of Jesus as written under Matthew 13:57 and Mark 6:4 as a title for this chapter (pages 121-135). According to the teaching of the Holy Bible, when Jesus started preaching in Nazareth, he was not accepted by the residents of Nazareth among whom he lived and who knew him as the son of carpenter, not as Messiah. As writtenunder Matthew 13: 54-57 ^“Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home”.This is simply to give the context to the title and let’s move on to our review.
In this chapter, the writer explained how Moses who had been adopted by Egyptian Prices and grown up in privilege turned against Egyptian Pharaohs and led the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery to “the promised land”and how rebels from the inside become liberators from suppression. This is a valid argument and Team Lemma that came out of EPRDF and dramatically changed EPRDF is the best example in this regard. He also explains the need to be ready to assist and lead the change that comes out of dissatisfaction of people and to accept the challenges which may come from the two extremes—from the oppressor like Pharaoh who objected the liberation idea of Moses andfrom the oppressed that are liberated but oppose the change and want to go back to the previous conditions like Jewish who blamed Moses and asked him that they want to go back to Egyptian slavery. He presented Moses as an example of good leader.
The other person whom the author presented as an example of god leader in this chapter is President Park Chung-hee of South Korea. The author glorified President Park who was a military General that came to power in 1961 through coup and known for his authoritarian way of ruling and assassinated in 1979. He argued the New Community Movement (SaemaulUndong) launched on April 22, 1970 by President Park to modernize rural economy united every South Korean regardless of race, religion, language, and ethnicity. I think the author wrote this to create an example for Ethiopia because South Korea has homogenous people with only one race, one language, and one ethnic group.Here, I observed factual deficiency.
It is undeniable that under President Park (1963-1979) the South Korean Government promoted the import of raw materials and technology, saving and investment over consumption, kept wages low, and directed resources to export-oriented industries and these contributed to the fast economic growth.However, the credit of that economic growth shouldn’t be given only to his leadership because there were many factors which played into that. For example, following the end of Korean War of 1950-1953, South Korea emerged as one of the key allies in the Cold War to fight communism and there were huge foreign aid (both financial and technical) flow into South Korea until early 1980s which contributed to its fast economic growth. The Confucianteachings of love for a country and hard work and social system also had its role. However, like the rest of the advocates of the idea of “Developmental State” including the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi,the author exaggerated the contribution of President Park who is the controversial person in Korean history to the fast economic growth of South Korea in 1960s and 1970s.
In this chapter, the author over simplified the relationship of Government and the people by saying that “government and people are like a family who live in the same house”.
PART FOUR: “If You Don't Know Where You Are Going, Any Road Will Take You There” George Harrison
7.      Chapter Seven (The Oars by which the Boat of our Political Economic Ideology is Steered and the Uncertain Destination): In this chapter seven (pages 139-162), the author discussed four political ideologies (socialism, social democracy, neoliberalism, and revolutionary democracy) and the concept and result of developmental state. Out of the four political ideologies, he chosen neoliberalism and revolutionary democracy as relevant ideologies for Ethiopian situation and discussed in more details. He criticized neoliberalism and concluded that it is not a preferred choice for developing countries. However, the arguments he presented to discredit liberal ideology are not strong.
In his detailed discussion, the author used revolutionary democracy which is a political ideology and the concept of developmental state interchangeably. He didn’t tell us the similarities and differences of revolutionary democracy and developmental state policy and how they are related.He also didn’t tell us whether the countries he listed as the implementers of developmental economic policy(South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore) used revolutionary democracy as their political ideology or not.
Farewell: In the farewell section of the book (pages 164-173), the author discusses life and death and mentions about the importance of doing something valuable before we die. In this section, he also discussed road and bridge, science and technology, the need for knowledge and honesty. I expected to see the concluding remarks about stirrup and throne (how to ascend to power) in this last section of the book, but I couldn’t find them.
Commentaries on the back of the book: On the back of the book, the opinions of two individual were given. The reviewer by the name of Dr. Miheret Debebe said DRAZ simplified the hard leadership secrete and shared with us. The reviewer by the name of Dr. Abdulrezak Muhiyedin said DRAZ is the first Ethiopian to provide us illustrative sources of modern threats and their solutions in a good language.
Epilogue: The book was written in simple and beautiful language and this shows writer’s ability of command of the Amharic language. The author used parables and stories to illustrate some of his ideas; quotations, songs, and figures to support some of his arguments, and parallelism writing style to attract the readers. These make the book interesting for readers. In this 173 page book, I noticed only one minor typo on page148.This shows that the manuscript of the book was well proof read and the seriousness of the author on what he is doing.
The book is about politics, leadership, history, and motivation. Except chapter seven, all chapters of the book are connected and the flow of ideas is good. I recommend the book to readers.

AfricaIs country

The media’s crisis on Ethiopia

BY:Ayantu Ayana.

Western media coverage of Ethiopia’s political crisis turns a blind eye to the grassroots movement behind the protests.

Ethiopia is facing a turbulent political period of unrest ignited by the shooting death on June 29 of a beloved and iconic Oromo musician and activist, Haacaaluu Hundeessaa. Assassinated in the capital, Addis Ababa, Haacaaluu played a pivotal role providing inspiration and vision for the youth movement in 2014-2018 that forced a peaceful change at the top of Ethiopia’s ruling party in 2018.

In April 2018 in an internal party election of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), Hailemariam Desalegn was succeeded by Abiy Ahmed. The latter embarked on a reform process which was supposed to address contradictions exposed within Ethiopian society and politics by the protests, especially the need for domestic economic reforms and breathing life into the federal character of the Ethiopian state. Abiy has since dismantled the EPRDF and formed a unitary party, the Prosperity Party (PP).

The news of Haacaaluu’s death shook a country already despairing of a smooth transition to democracy. It touched off widespread grassroots protests in the Oromia region, the largest and most populous of Ethiopia’s 10 federal states. Police responded with a brutal crackdown starting with firing live ammunition into crowds of mourners. Immediately a sweep of Oromo individuals and institutions followed. At the time of writing more than 300 people have been killed, many more injured by security forces in the aftermath of the assassination. Three weeks ago, government sources reported that more than 7,000 people have been detained. Although updated figures have since not been released, detention rates remain high and schools emptied by COVID-19 are now prisons.

The first taken were well-known opposition leaders Bekele Gerba and Jawar Mohammed, along with 35 others. Jawar’s arrest was particularly dramatic because, despite his stated skepticism, he was considered an early ally of Abiy. The next day after Jawar’s arrest, police ransacked and closed the Oromia Media Network (OMN), a popular alternative to government-controlled sources of information for millions of people in Afaan Oromo, a language spoken by about half of the country’s population. The OMN was established in 2013 by journalists and activists living abroad, and Jawar became its second Executive Director in the US. After Abiy became a prime minister, Jawar returned to Ethiopia.

Unfortunately, international English language media coverage of the unfolding crisis in Ethiopia has presented a single, incomplete narrative to explain the conflict. Major news outlets, such as Associated Press,Washington Post, and WSJ represented the crisis by attributing it to “ethnic” tension, using terms such as “violent mobs” and “vandalism.” Some outlets insinuate that the current catastrophe is a byproduct of the country’s “ethnic federal system.” TIMEconspicuously implicated the country’s constitution because it “divides Ethiopia into ethnically based territories.”

In Ethiopia’s existing political landscape, a fraction of the approximately 20% of the population who are urban elites blame the constitution for the current tensions and want to dismantle the components that protect the rights of named regional states. They want the resource base to be treated as a centrally controlled asset they can exploit. The model of multinational federalism created regional states from national/linguistic/cultural groups as semi-autonomous entities to cooperate in federal arrangement. This decision was the result of long resistance to autocratic centralized military rule. It retains a strong support among rural producers (at least 80% of the population). They want rights to develop the lands they consider their birthright and to protect them from unsustainable development by urban elites controlled from Addis Ababa. Yet mainstream media coverage presumes that nationality-based territories protected in the constitution contribute to the unrest rather than provide a solution.

Ethiopia is on the brink of chaos, perhaps even at great risk for a devastating civil war, primarily due to Abiy’s attempts to subvert the existing constitutional arrangement. Most Ethiopians do not support the imposition of further centralization from Addis Ababa. By turning a blind eye to the mounting grassroots resistance, media coverage fails to provide the kind of complete picture or balance necessary to understand the crisis.

Media coverage of Ethiopia needs to acknowledge those who support the sort of regional state autonomy based on linguistic/cultural groups that is enshrined as “multinational federalism” in the Ethiopian constitution of 1995. When Abiy stepped into the political opening created by the youth resistance, he explicitly promised to deliver the transition to democracy via free and fair elections that the previous regime had failed to deliver. The US, the EU, and other international bodies accepted and praised him for his commitment to democratic transition.

However, the basic demands of the grassroots movement have been deliberately dismissed. The marginalized groups are again disappointed. Furthermore, Abiy has commanded an active campaign to delegitimize the peaceful protests and the youth who led them. His government encourages the maligning, denigrating, and targeting of Oromo youth categorically. Over the last two years and increasingly in the aftermath of the assassination, state media have continuously referred to them as “violent,” “hate-driven,” and violent mobs driving “inter-ethnic” conflict. They are now being scapegoated for the recent unrest. Both domestic and international media outlets have magnified this narrative.

With Abiy’s about-face, the glimmer of hope, presented by what was to be a transformative transition to participatory democracy, has now flickered and disappeared. In fact, while urging the youth movement and Oromo leaders to “give him time,” the prime minister has taken giant steps away from democratization.

Over the last year and half, while virtually all media reporting on Ethiopia centered around vanity projects which placed the Prime Minister in the limelight, his government has imposed a state of emergency and military command with severe restrictions on citizens in parts of Oromia where his policies enjoy little or no support. Forces under his direct control carry out extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, house burnings, displacement, and other human rights abuses in these dissident areas as documented by human rights groups such as Amnesty International.

Media reporting has missed how Abiy’s persistent steps have subverted the goals of the grassroots movement. In October 2019, for example, Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize, winning laudatory media coverage. He also dramatically acted to dismantle the ruling coalition party, EPRDF, which provided the underpinning to multinational federalism. In an affront to the spirit of federalism he announced the creation of a single national party.

This move was universally unpopular with the youth movement as a betrayal of the promises of democracy. The ensuing region-wide youth demonstrations, in which 86 people died, were blamed on Jawar, noting his large following among the youth. He had spoken out publicly against Abiy’s political move against federalism by forming a single party. But media reports, and even human rights groups, missed this wider context of youth vexation over Abiy’s betrayal.

Remarkably, people managed to hang onto hope as they anticipated elections. A key to that constant reminder of hope was the music of Haacaaluu on everyone’s playlist, singing about what was possible if they peacefully harnessed their energy and looked to a future of unity. He embodied the grassroots. He himself had urged the youth to be patient with Abiy and to wait for him to get them to elections so that they could realize their desire to transition into a decentralized (multinational) federal system.

Haacaaluu’s assassination removed a safeguard against despair, not only for Oromo, but for other people brought forcibly into Ethiopia and marginalized thereafter. They all anticipated a change away from oppressive economic, political, and cultural structures.

Abiy’s return to authoritarian rule has re-ignited the #OromoProtests movement. His brutal response in suppressing the protests threatens to destabilize the country and the region. Yet the media claim that Abiy has “transcended” ethnic politics, missing many complexities, including a rise in incendiary historical narratives coming from his office and amplified on state and establishment media that pits national groups against each other. Following the assassination, media coverage has missed the scale and motivations for the ongoing government crackdown against anyone who does not agree with Abiy’s agenda. Journalists have presented simplistic narratives that suggest a personal conflict between Abiy and Jawar, reducing an extremely complex story involving much of the grassroots, who are entirely erased from coverage. By including the view from the grassroots, media outlets can deliver a more complete and balanced account of this volatile and fragile moment in Ethiopia

About the Author

Ayantu Ayana is a PhD student and a board member of Oromo Advocacy Alliance.

The figure holding a gun stepped beside the car in which Haacaaluu Hundeessaa was sitting in Addis Ababa, and pulled the trigger. The cold-blooded killing on the night of 29 June cut short the young life of one of Ethiopia’s most popular musicians and activists. It was also the start of some of the most consequential few daysin recent Ethiopian history.

Hours later, in the lakeside town of Ziway in Ethiopia’s Oromia region – from which Haacaaluu came – Selas Russell woke to the sound of gunfire and shouting. Soon a friend rang her. “Get up, grab your passport, leave your belongings and run for your life,” he told the Ethiopian-born British citizen who owns a hotel in the town.

Haacaaluu Hundeessaa at the Millennium Hall in Addis Ababa two years ago. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

As she and her staff fled, a mob mostly of young Oromo men and some women – carrying petrol, sticks, machetes and knives – stormed the compound and set it alight.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Oromia in the early hours of 30 June. They came to show their grief and anger at the death of the man who had supplied the soundtrack to the Oromo protest movement that began in 2014 and led to the appointment of Abiy Ahmed as prime minister in 2018. Abiy, a young Oromo from the ruling party, promised democracy for all and action to improve the lives of marginalised Oromos. A year later, he won the Nobel peace prize.

But things turned nasty. In Legatafo, a satellite town in Oromia near the capital, trucks arriving from the north were set on fire shortly after sunrise. Lake Amanu, a lorry owner and an ethnic Amhara, tells the Guardian how he, his driver and a police officer were chased by a gang carrying sticks, stones and machetes. “I ran away and hid under a bridge – they came after me,” he says. “They chase you if you don’t speak their language.”

Similar scenes took place elsewhere. In Addis Ababa, homes and businesses were vandalised and residents formed defence groups, in a few cases attacking Oromo residents or buildings belonging to them. Troops were deployed to restore order and the internet was switched off nationwide for more than a week. Thousands have been arrested, including key opposition leaders.

In some places the violence seemed spontaneous and random. Selas said some of her attackers appeared blind drunk. But in places such as Shashamane, 90km south of Ziway, it looked organised, with property belonging to non-Oromos quickly singled out for destruction.

“They knew what they were doing, they definitely knew,” says an Oromo resident of the city who asked to remain anonymous. Coordination and premeditation are “hallmark signs of ethnic cleansing”, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) noted in a statement(though there is no conclusive evidence of that). In the 24 hours after the assassination, hate speech and inflammatory messages circulated on social media and through a TV station formerly run by influential Oromo activist and politician Jawar Mohammed.

More than 160 people are said to have died in the unrest: some murdered – often in gruesome circumstances – by mobs; others shot by security forces. Houses, factories, businesses, hotels, cars and government offices were set alight or damaged across Oromia. More than 10,000 people fled their homes, according to the Oromia government communications bureau, out of fear or because their properties were destroyed.

What happened on 29 June and over the following days has further polarised the country, tearing at already fraying relations between the country’s two largest ethnic groups, Oromos and Amharas, and pitting opposing camps – pan-Ethiopians and ethnic nationalists – more implacably against each other.

It also took place in the context of a mooted democratic transition that opposition groups say is stalling, and in which the government’s use of force – ostensibly to target armed rebels in Oromia – has become increasingly widespread and indiscriminate. According to one well-connected Oromo activist, preparations for anti-government protests had been planned for several weeks before Haacaaluu’s murder.

Smoke rises over Addis Ababa during protests following Haacaaluu’s fatal shooting. Photograph: Reuters Tv/Reuters

Since then the social and political fractures underlying Ethiopia’s current crisis have widened. On the one side are those sympathetic to Abiy’s Prosperity party (PP) – which includes many Amharas – and the pan-Ethiopian nationalism with which it has become associated. On the other are those including many Oromos who are hostile to what they see as the centralising, culturally assimilating agenda of an Oromo prime minister they believe has betrayed them. Some, particularly those from smaller ethnic groups, remain in the middle – though that space is shrinking.

The government says Haacaaluu was murdered by Oromo nationalist militants as part of a wider plot to derail its reform agenda. The ruling party has also suggested that its rival in the northern region of Tigray, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), masterminded the conspiracy.

The TPLF dominated the ruling coalition, formerly known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, until Abiy took office in 2018. It has since abandoned former allies in Addis Ababa and joined the opposition, accusing the prime minister of planning to replace Ethiopia’s ethnic-based federal systemwith a more unitary state.

Both it and influential Oromo nationalist groups like the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) deny involvement in either the murder or the unrest. “Our struggle is to create a country where people can speak freely. We don’t kill people because they speak their mind,” Kumsa Diriba, a commander of Oromo rebels in the region’s west, told Voice of America in an interview.

Some of the government’s opponents have sought to blame it and its pan-Ethiopian allies, claiming it was part of an orchestrated plan to justify further repression.

“Everyone is trying to frame what happened to fit their agenda,” says a local journalist in Adama who asked not to be named.

But the facts, such as they are

Sunday, August 2, 2020

Constitutional theory

Constitutional theory is an area of constitutional law that focuses on the underpinnings of constitutional government. It overlaps with legal theory, constitutionalism, philosophy of law and democratic theory. It is not limited by country or jurisdiction.

United States

Constitutional theory in the United States is an academic discipline that focuses on the meaning of the United States Constitution. Its concerns include (but are not limited to) the historical, linguistic, sociological, ethical, and political aspects.

Much of constitutional theory is concerned with theories of judicial review. This is in part because Marbury v. Madison, which established this judicial power in the early 19th century, has given the judiciary near-final authority on constitutional meaning.

Aside from judicial review, constitutional theory in general seeks to ask and answer the following questions:

How should the Constitution be interpreted?
How much weight should be given to the history of the Constitution's framing?
How much, if any, of the Constitution's meaning can be read as implicit in the text?
What vision of republican government does the Constitution seek to further?
How does constitutional meaning shift with other changes in the political structure?
How does constitutional meaning shift with changes in cultural norms?
What is the proper relationship between individual rights and state power?
What is the proper relationship between the branches of government
- This question involves the power of judicial review, noted above
What is the proper relationship between the federal government and the states?

Although constitutional theory as a discipline has its precursors in The Federalist and Justice Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, modern constitutional theory began with the publication of Alexander Bickel's The Least Dangerous Branch. (The title is an allusion to The Federalist No. 78, in which Alexander Hamilton wrote that the judiciary "will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution", because it has neither the sword (like the Executive) nor the purse (like the Legislature). The book's primary (but not sole) contribution was to introduce the idea of the "countermajoritarian difficulty." The idea expressed by the term countermajoritarian difficulty is that there is a tension between democratic government (as he defines it democratic government is majoritarian government) and judicial power. If the judiciary—an unelected branch of government—can overturn popular legislation, then either there is a fundamental contradiction within the democratic system, or there is a tension that must be resolved by curbing judicial power. (One of Bickel's solutions is for the Court to exercise "the passive virtues": that is, to decline to decide more than it has to decide.)

Important theorists

The following is a partial list if important American theorists and thinkers:

Bruce Ackerman, Professor of Law, Yale University. Primary contributions: We the People: Foundations and We the People: Transformations.
Jack Balkin, Professor of Law, Yale University
Charles A. Beard, Professor of Sociology, New School for Social Research, Primary contributions: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
Randy Barnett, Professor of Law, Georgetown University
Alexander Bickel, former Yale professor who published The Least Dangerous Branch, The Morality of Consent, The Supreme Court and the Idea of Progress, among other works.
Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Ronald Dworkin, Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
John Hart Ely, Scholar and former professor at several leading law schools.
Alex Kozinski, Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitState (polity)|
Richard Posner, Senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Robert Post, professor of law at Yale Law School
Richard Primus, Professor of Law University of Michigan Law School
Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. His ideas on originalism published in A Matter of Interpretation.
Suzanna Sherry, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School. Primary contributions: Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations and Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law (both with Daniel Farber of Boalt Hall).
Cass Sunstein, Professor of Law, Harvard University
William Howard Taft (b. 1858 - d. 1930), 10th Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930); 27th President of the United States (1909–1913); Kent Professor of Constitutional Law and Legal History, Yale Law School, Yale University (1913–1921); Dean and Professor of Law, University of Cincinnati Law School; Solicitor General of the United States
Laurence Tribe, Professor of Law, Harvard University Law School
William Van Alstyne, Professor of Law, College of William & Mary

German Rechtsstaat

The Rechtsstaat doctrine (Legal state, State of Right, Constitutional state, constitutional government) was introduced in the latest works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) after US and French constitutions were adopted in the late 18th century. Kant’s approach is based on the supremacy of a country’s written constitution. This supremacy must create guarantees for implementation of his central idea: a permanent peaceful life as a basic condition for the happiness of its people and their prosperity. Kant was basing his doctrine on none other but constitutionalism and constitutional government.

Kant had thus formulated the main problem of constitutionalism, “The constitution of a state is eventually based on the morals of its citizens, which, in its turns, is based on the goodness of this constitution.” Kant’s idea is the foundation for the constitutional theory of the twenty-first century. The Legal state concept is based on the ideas, discovered by Immanuel Kant, for example, in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals: “The task of establishing a universal and permanent peaceful life is not only a part of theory of law within the framework of pure reason, but per se an absolute and ultimate goal. To achieve this goal, a state must become the community of a large number of people, living provided with legislative guarantees of their property rights secured by a common constitution. The supremacy of this constitution… must be derived a priori from the considerations for achievement of the absolute ideal in the most just and fair organization of people’s life under the aegis of public law.”.

Russian legal state

The Russian legal system, borne out of transformations in the 19th Century under the judicial reform of Alexander II, is based primarily upon the German legal tradition. It was from here that Russia borrowed a doctrine of Rechtsstaat, which literally translates as Legal State. The English most close analogue is «rule of law». Rechtsstaat is a concept in continental European legal thinking, originally borrowed from German legal philosophy, which can be translated as “legal state” or "state of law", or "state of rights", "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law. The Russian Legal state concept adopts the written constitution as a supreme law of the country (the rule of constitution). The concept of “legal state” (“pravovoe gosudarstvo” in Russian) is a fundamental, but undefined, principle that appears in the very first dispositive provision of Russia’s post-Communist constitution: “The Russian Federation – Russia – constitutes a democratic federative legal state with a republican form of governance.” Similarly, the very first dispositive provision of the Constitution of Ukraine declares: “Ukraine is a sovereign and independent, democratic, social, legal state.” The effort to give meaning to definition “Legal State” is anything but theoretical.

Valery Zorkin, President of the Constitutional Court of Russia, wrote in 2003: “Becoming a legal state has long been our ultimate goal, and we have certainly made serious progress in this direction over the past several years. However, no one can say now that we have reached this destination. Such a Legal state simply cannot exist without a lawful and just society. Here, as in no other sphere of our life, the state reflects the level of maturity reached by society.".

The Russian concept of legal state adopted many segments of the constitutional economics. One of the founders of constitutional economics James M. Buchanan, the 1986 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences argues that in the framework of constitutional government any governmental interventions and regulations have been based on three assumptions.

First, every failure of the market economy to function smoothly and perfectly can be corrected by governmental intervention.
Second, those holding political office and manning the bureaucracies are altruistic upholders of the public interest, unconcerned with their own personal economic well-being.
And, third, changing the responsibilities of government towards more intervention and control will not profoundly and perversely affect the social and economic life.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the full right and power of a governing body over itself, without any interference from outside sources or bodies. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme authority over some polity. In international law, the important concept of sovereignty refers to the exercise of power by a state. De jure sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty the ability in fact to do so (which becomes of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and rest in the same organization)

The frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, depicting the Sovereign as a massive body wielding a sword and crosier and composed of many individual people

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One can also refer to a monarch who reigns over a sovereign realm as a sovereign.

Etymology

The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin's *superanus, (itself derived form of Latin super - "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spelling, which varied from the word's first appearance in English in the fourteenth century, was influenced by the English reign.

Concepts

The concepts of sovereignty have been discussed throughout history, and are still actively debated. Its definition, concept, and application has changed throughout, especially during the Age of Enlightenment. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects consisting of territory, population, authority and recognition. According to Stephen D. Krasner, the term could also be understood in four different ways:

Domestic sovereignty – actual control over a state exercised by an authority organized within this state,
Interdependence sovereignty – actual control of movement across state's borders, assuming the borders exist,
International legal sovereignty – formal recognition by other sovereign states,
Westphalian sovereignty – lack of other authority over state other than the domestic authority (examples of such other authorities could be a non-domestic church, a non-domestic political organization, or any other external agent).

Often, these four aspects all appear together, but this is not necessarily the case – they are not affected by one another, and there are historical examples of states that were non-sovereign in one aspect while at the same time being sovereign in another of these aspects. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, another fundamental feature of sovereignty is that it is a claim that must be recognised by others if it is to have any meaning:

“

Sovereignty is more than anything else a matter of legitimacy [...that] requires reciprocal recognition. Sovereignty is a hypothetical trade, in which two potentially conflicting sides, respecting de facto realities of power, exchange such recognitions as their least costly strategy.

”

History

Classical

The Roman jurist Ulpian observed that:

The people transferred all their imperium and power to the Emperor. Cum lege regia, quae de imperio eius lata est, populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat (Digest I.4.1)
The emperor is not bound by the laws. Princeps legibus solutus est (Digest I.3.31)
A decision by the emperor has the force of law. Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem. (Digest I.4.1)

Ulpian was expressing the idea that the Emperor exercised a rather absolute form of sovereignty, that originated in the people, although he did not use the term expressly.

Medieval

Ulpian's statements were known in medieval Europe, but sovereignty was an important concept in medieval times. Medieval monarchs were not sovereign, at least not strongly so, because they were constrained by, and shared power with, their feudal aristocracy. Furthermore, both were strongly constrained by custom.

Sovereignty existed during the Medieval period as the de jure rights of nobility and royalty, and in the de facto capability of individuals to make their own choices in life.

Around c. 1380–1400, the issue of feminine sovereignty was addressed in Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English collection of Canterbury Tales, specifically in The Wife of Bath's Tale.

A later English Arthurian romance, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell (c. 1450), uses many of the same elements of the Wife of Bath's tale, yet changes the setting to the court of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The story revolves around the knight Sir Gawain granting to Dame Ragnell, his new bride, what is purported to be wanted most by women: sovereignty.

We desire most from men,
From men both lund and poor,
To have sovereignty without lies.
For where we have sovereignty, all is ours,
Though a knight be ever so fierce,
And ever win mastery.
It is our desire to have master
Over such a sir.
Such is our purpose.
— The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell (c. 1450),

Reformation

Sovereignty reemerged as a concept in the late 16th century, a time when civil wars had created a craving for stronger central authority, when monarchs had begun to gather power onto their own hands at the expense of the nobility, and the modern nation state was emerging. Jean Bodin, partly in reaction to the chaos of the French wars of religion, presented theories of sovereignty calling for strong central authority in the form of absolute monarchy. In his 1576 treatise Les Six Livres de la République ("Six Books of the Republic") Bodin argued that it is inherent in the nature of the state that sovereignty must be:

Absolute: On this point he said that the sovereign must be hedged in with obligations and conditions, must be able to legislate without his (or its) subjects' consent, must not be bound by the laws of his predecessors, and could not, because it is illogical, be bound by his own laws.
Perpetual: Not temporarily delegated as to a strong leader in an emergency or to a state employee such as a magistrate. He held that sovereignty must be perpetual because anyone with the power to enforce a time limit on the governing power must be above the governing power, which would be impossible if the governing power is absolute.

Bodin rejected the notion of transference of sovereignty from people to the ruler (also known as the sovereign); natural law and divine law confer upon the sovereign the right to rule. And the sovereign is not above divine law or natural law. He is above (ie. not bound by) only positive law, that is, laws made by humans. He emphasized that a sovereign is bound to observe certain basic rules derived from the divine law, the law of nature or reason, and the law that is common to all nations (jus gentium), as well as the fundamental laws of the state that determine who is the sovereign, who succeeds to sovereignty, and what limits the sovereign power. Thus, Bodin’s sovereign was restricted by the constitutional law of the state and by the higher law that was considered as binding upon every human being. The fact that the sovereign must obey divine and natural law imposes ethical constraints on him. Bodin also held that the lois royales, the fundamental laws of the French monarchy which regulated matters such as succession, are natural laws and are binding on the French sovereign.

Despite his commitment to absolutism, Bodin held some moderate opinions on how government should in practice be carried out. He held that although the sovereign is not obliged to, it is advisable for him, as a practical expedient, to convene a senate from whom he can obtain advice, to delegate some power to magistrates for the practical administration of the law, and to use the Estates as a means of communicating with the people. Bodin believed that “the most divine, most excellent, and the state form most proper to royalty is governed partly aristocratically and partly democratically”.

With his doctrine that sovereignty is conferred by divine law, Bodin predefined the scope of the divine right of kings.

Age of Enlightenment

During the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as the main Western description of the meaning and power of a State. In particular, the "Social contract" as a mechanism for establishing sovereignty was suggested and, by 1800, widely accepted, especially in the new United States and France, though also in Great Britain to a lesser extent.

Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651) put forward a conception of sovereignty similar to Bodin's, which had just achieved legal status in the "Peace of Westphalia", but for different reasons. He created the first modern version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne [sic] Power" that is able to compel them to act in the common good. This expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty. Hobbes strengthened the definition of sovereignty beyond either Westphalian or Bodin's, by saying that it must be:

Absolute: because conditions could only be imposed on a sovereign if there were some outside arbitrator to determine when he had violated them, in which case the sovereign would not be the final authority.
Indivisible: The sovereign is the only final authority in his territory; he does not share final authority with any other entity. Hobbes held this to be true because otherwise there would be no way of resolving a disagreement between the multiple authorities.

Hobbes' hypothesis—that the ruler's sovereignty is contracted to him by the people in return for his maintaining their physical safety—led him to conclude that if and when the ruler fails, the people recover their ability to protect themselves by forming a new contract.

Hobbes's theories decisively shape the concept of sovereignty through the medium of social contract theories. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's (1712–1778) definition of popular sovereignty (with early antecedents in Francisco Suárez's theory of the origin of power), provides that the people are the legitimate sovereign. Rousseau considered sovereignty to be inalienable; he condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which constitutional monarchy or representative democracy is founded. John Locke, and Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty; their views differ with Rousseau and with Hobbes on this issue of alienability.

The second book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique (1762) deals with sovereignty and its rights. Sovereignty, or the general will, is inalienable, for the will cannot be transmitted; it is indivisible, since it is essentially general; it is infallible and always right, determined and limited in its power by the common interest; it acts through laws. Law is the decision of the general will in regard to some object of common interest, but though the general will is always right and desires only good, its judgment is not always enlightened, and consequently does not always see wherein the common good lies; hence the necessity of the legislator. But the legislator has, of himself, no authority; he is only a guide who drafts and proposes laws, but the people alone (that is, the sovereign or general will) has authority to make and impose them.

Rousseau, in the Social Contract argued, "the growth of the State giving the trustees of public authority more and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have force to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn in order to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being of wonder" (Book II, Chapter I) resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own, is not a law" (Book II, Chapter VI) – and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the people have an unbiased means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign."

Definition and types

There exists perhaps no conception the meaning of which is more controversial than that of sovereignty. It is an indisputable fact that this conception, from the moment when it was introduced into political science until the present day, has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon.

Lassa Oppenheim (30-03-1858 – 07-10-1919), an authority on international law

Absoluteness

An important factor of sovereignty is its degree of absoluteness. A sovereign power has absolute sovereignty when it is not restricted by a constitution, by the laws of its predecessors, or by custom, and no areas of law or policy are reserved as being outside its control. International law; policies and actions of neighboring states; cooperation and respect of the populace; means of enforcement; and resources to enact policy are factors that might limit sovereignty. For example, parents are not guaranteed the right to decide some matters in the upbringing of their children independent of societal regulation, and municipalities do not have unlimited jurisdiction in local matters, thus neither parents nor municipalities have absolute sovereignty. Theorists have diverged over the desirability of increased absoluteness.

Exclusivity

A key element of sovereignty in a legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of jurisdiction. Specifically, the degree to which decisions made by a sovereign entity might be contradicted by another authority. Along these lines, the German sociologist Max Weber proposed that sovereignty is a community's monopoly on the legitimate use of force; and thus any group claiming the same right must either be brought under the yoke of the sovereign, proven illegitimate, or otherwise contested and defeated for sovereignty to be genuine. International law, competing branches of government, and authorities reserved for subordinate entities (such as federated states or republics) represent legal infringements on exclusivity. Social institutions such as religious bodies, corporations, and competing political parties might represent de facto infringements on exclusivity.

De jure and de facto

De jure, or legal, sovereignty concerns the expressed and institutionally recognised right to exercise control over a territory. De facto, or actual, sovereignty is concerned with whether control in fact exists. Cooperation and respect of the populace; control of resources in, or moved into, an area; means of enforcement and security; and ability to carry out various functions of state all represent measures of de facto sovereignty. When control is practiced predominantly by military or police force it is considered coercive sovereignty.

Sovereignty and independence

State sovereignty is sometimes viewed synonymously with independence, however, sovereignty can be transferred as a legal right whereas independence cannot. A state can achieve de facto independence long after acquiring sovereignty, such as in the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Additionally, independence can also be suspended when an entire region becomes subject to an occupation such as when Iraq had been overrun by the forces to take part in the Iraq War of 2003, Iraq had not been annexed by any country, so its sovereignty during this period was not contested by any state including those present on the territory. Alternatively, independence can be lost completely when sovereignty itself becomes the subject of dispute. The pre-World War II administrations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia maintained an exile existence (and considerable international recognition) whilst their territories were annexed by the Soviet Union and governed locally by their pro-Soviet functionaries. When in 1991 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia re-enacted independence, it was done so on the basis of continuity directly from the pre-Soviet republics. Another complicated sovereignty scenario can arise when regime itself is the subject of dispute. In the case of Poland, the People's Republic of Poland which governed Poland from 1945 to 1989 is now seen to have been an illegal entity by the modern Polish administration. The post-1989 Polish state claims direct continuity from the Second Polish Republic which ended in 1939. For other reasons however, Poland maintains its communist-era outline as opposed to its pre-World War II shape which included areas now in Belarus, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia and Ukraine but did not include some of its western regions that were then in Germany.

At the opposite end of the scale, there is no dispute regarding the self-governance of certain self-proclaimed states such as Republic of Abkhazia, Republic of South Ossetia or the Republic of Kosovo (see List of states with limited recognition) since their governments neither answer to a bigger state, nor is their governance subjected to supervision. The sovereignty (i.e. legal right to govern) however, is disputed in all three cases as the first two entities are claimed by Georgia and the third by Serbia.

Internal

Internal sovereignty is the relationship between a sovereign power and the political community. A central concern is legitimacy: by what right does a government exercise authority? Claims of legitimacy might refer to the divine right of kings, or to a social contract (i.e. popular sovereignty). Max Weber offered a first categorization of political authority and legitimacy with the categories of traditional, charismatic and legal-rational.

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. A state that has internal sovereignty is one with a government that has been elected by the people and has the popular legitimacy. Internal sovereignty examines the internal affairs of a state and how it operates. It is important to have strong internal sovereignty in relation to keeping order and peace. When you have weak internal sovereignty, organisations such as rebel groups will undermine the authority and disrupt the peace. The presence of a strong authority allows you to keep agreement and enforce sanctions for the violation of laws. The ability for leadership to prevent these violations is a key variable in determining internal sovereignty. The lack of internal sovereignty can cause war in one of two ways: first, undermining the value of agreement by allowing costly violations; and second, requiring such large subsidies for implementation that they render war cheaper than peace. Leadership needs to be able to promise members, especially those like armies, police forces, or paramilitaries will abide by agreements. The presence of strong internal sovereignty allows a state to deter opposition groups in exchange for bargaining. It has been said that a more decentralized authority would be more efficient in keeping peace because the deal must please not only the leadership but also the opposition group. While the operations and affairs within a state are relative to the level of sovereignty within that state, there is still an argument between who should hold the authority in a sovereign state.

This argument between who should hold the authority within a sovereign state is called the traditional doctrine of public sovereignty. This discussion is between an internal sovereign or an authority of public sovereignty. An internal sovereign is a political body that possesses ultimate, final and independent authority; one whose decisions are binding upon all citizens, groups and institutions in society. Early thinkers believe sovereignty should be vested in the hands of a single person, a monarch. They believed the overriding merit of vesting sovereignty in a single individual was that sovereignty would therefore be indivisible; it would be expressed in a single voice that could claim final authority. An example of an internal sovereign or monarch is Louis XIV of France during the seventeenth century; Louis XIV claimed that he was the state. Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected monarchical rule in favor of the other type of authority within a sovereign state, public sovereignty. Public Sovereignty is the belief that ultimate authority is vested in the people themselves, expressed in the idea of the general will. This means that the power is elected and supported by its members, the authority has a central goal of the good of the people in mind. The idea of public sovereignty has often been the basis for modern democratic theory.

Modern internal sovereignty

Within the modern governmental system, internal sovereignty is usually found in states that have public sovereignty and rarely found within a state controlled by an internal sovereign. A form of government that is a little different from both is the UK parliament system. John Austin argued that sovereignty in the UK was vested neither in the Crown nor in the people but in the "Queen-in-Parliament". This is the origin of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and is usually seen as the fundamental principle of the British constitution. With these principles of parliamentary sovereignty majority control can gain access to unlimited constitutional authority, creating what has been called "elective dictatorship" or "modern autocracy". Public sovereignty in modern governments is a lot more common with examples like the USA, Canada, Australia and India where government is divided into different levels.

External

External sovereignty concerns the relationship between a sovereign power and other states. For example, the United Kingdom uses the following criterion when deciding under what conditions other states recognise a political entity as having sovereignty over some territory;

"Sovereignty." A government which exercises de facto administrative control over a country and is not subordinate to any other government in that country or a foreign sovereign state.

(The Arantzazu Mendi, [1939] A.C. 256), Stroud's Judicial Dictionary

External sovereignty is connected with questions of international law – such as: when, if ever, is intervention by one country into another's territory permissible?

Following the Thirty Years' War, a European religious conflict that embroiled much of the continent, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a norm of noninterference in the affairs of other states, so-called Westphalian sovereignty, even though the actual treaty itself reaffirmed the multiple levels of sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. This resulted as a natural extension of the older principle of cuius regio, eius religio (Whose realm, his religion), leaving the Roman Catholic Church with little ability to interfere with the internal affairs of many European states. It is a myth, however, that the Treaties of Westphalia created a new European order of equal sovereign states.

In international law, sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit. Determining whether a specific entity is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. There is usually an expectation that both de jure and de facto sovereignty rest in the same organisation at the place and time of concern. Foreign governments use varied criteria and political considerations when deciding whether or not to recognise the sovereignty of a state over a territory. Membership in the United Nations requires that "[t]he admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council."

Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The Holy See was in this position between the annexation in 1870 of the Papal States by Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929, a 59-year period during which it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly Roman Catholic) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the Vatican City. Another case, sui generis, though often contested, is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the third sovereign entity inside Italian territory (after San Marino and the Vatican City State) and the second inside the Italian capital (since in 1869 the Palazzo di Malta and the Villa Malta receive extraterritorial rights, in this way becoming the only "sovereign" territorial possessions of the modern Order), which is the last existing heir to one of several once militarily significant, crusader states of sovereign military orders. In 1607 its Grand masters were also made Reichsfürst (princes of the Holy Roman Empire) by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting them seats in the Reichstag, at the time the closest permanent equivalent to a UN-type general assembly; confirmed 1620). These sovereign rights were never deposed, only the territories were lost. 100 modern states still maintain full diplomatic relations with the order (now de facto "the most prestigious service club"), and the UN awarded it observer status.

The governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance, Norway, Netherlands or Czechoslovakia) during the Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation vis-à-vis the Iraqi occupation of its country during 1990–1991. The government of Republic of China was recognized as sovereign over China from 1911 to 1971 despite that its mainland China territory became occupied by Communist Chinese forces since 1949. In 1971 it lost UN recognition to Chinese Communist-led People's Republic of China and its sovereign and political status as a state became disputed and it lost its ability to use "China" as its name and therefore became commonly known as Taiwan.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is commonly mistaken to be sovereign. It has been granted various degrees of special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, including Belgium, France, Switzerland and soon in Ireland. Similarly for Australia, Russia, South Korea, South Africa and the US. that in cases like Switzerland are considerable, The Committee is a private organisation governed by Swiss law.

Shared and pooled

Just as the office of head of state can be vested jointly in several persons within a state, the sovereign jurisdiction over a single political territory can be shared jointly by two or more consenting powers, notably in the form of a condominium.

Likewise the member states of international organizations may voluntarily bind themselves by treaty to a supranational organization, such as a continental union. In the case of the European Union members states this is called "pooled sovereignty".

Another example of shared and pooled sovereignty is the Acts of Union 1707 which created the unitary state now known as the United Kingdom. It was a full economic union, meaning the Scottish and English systems of currency, taxation and laws regulating trade were aligned. Nonetheless, Scotland and England never fully surrendered or pooled all of their governance sovereignty; they retained many of their previous national institutional features and characteristics, particularly relating to their legal, religious and educational systems. In 2012, the Scottish Government, created in 1998 through devolution in the United Kingdom, negotiated terms with the Government of the United Kingdom for the 2014 Scottish independence referendum which resulted in the people of Scotland deciding to continue the pooling of its sovereignty with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Nation-states

A community of people who claim the right of self-determination based on a common ethnicity, history and culture might seek to establish sovereignty over a region, thus creating a nation-state. Such nations are sometimes recognised as autonomous areas rather than as fully sovereign, independent states.

Federations

In a federal system of government, sovereignty also refers to powers which a constituent state or republic possesses independently of the national government. In a confederation constituent entities retain the right to withdraw from the national body, but in a federation member states or republics do not hold that right.

Different interpretations of state sovereignty in the United States of America, as it related to the expansion of slavery and fugitive slave laws, led to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Depending on the particular issue, sometimes both northern and southern states justified their political positions by appealing to state sovereignty. Fearing that slavery would be threatened by results of the 1860 presidential election, eleven slave states declared their independence from the federal Union and formed a new confederation. The United States government rejected the secessions as rebellion, declaring that secession from the Union by an individual state was unconstitutional, as the states were part of an indissolvable federation.

Acquisition

A number of modes for acquisition of sovereignty are presently or have historically been recognized in international law as lawful methods by which a state may acquire sovereignty over external territory. The classification of these modes originally derived from Roman property law and from the 15th and 16th century with the development of international law. The modes are:

Cession is the transfer of territory from one state to another usually by means of treaty;
Occupation is the acquisition of territory that belongs to no state (or terra nullius);
Prescription is the effective control of territory of another acquiescing state;
Operations of nature is the acquisition of territory through natural processes like river accretion or volcanism;
Creation is the process by which new land is (re)claimed from the sea such as in the Netherlands.
Adjudication and
Conquest

*Limits of national jurisdiction and sovereignty*
Outer space (including Earth orbits; the Moon and other celestial bodies, and their orbits)
national airspace		territorial waters airspace	contiguous zone airspace	international airspace
land territory surface	internal waters surface	territorial waters surface	contiguous zone surface	Exclusive Economic Zone surface	international waters surface
internal waters		territorial waters	Exclusive economic zone		international waters
land territory underground		Continental shelf surface			extended continental shelf surface	international seabed surface
		Continental shelf underground			extended continental shelf underground	international seabed underground

full national jurisdiction and sovereignty

restrictions on national jurisdiction and sovereignty

international jurisdiction per common heritage of mankind

Justifications

There exist vastly differing views on the moral basis of sovereignty. A fundamental polarity is between theories that assert that sovereignty is vested directly in the sovereigns by divine or natural right and theories that assert it originates from the people. In the latter case there is a further division into those that assert that the people transfer their sovereignty to the sovereign (Hobbes), and those that assert that the people retain their sovereignty (Rousseau).

During the brief period of absolute monarchies in Europe, the divine right of kings was an important competing justification for the exercise of sovereignty. The Mandate of Heaven had some similar implications in China.

A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, retain sovereignty over the government and where offices of state are not granted through heritage. A common modern definition of a republic is a government having a head of state who is not a monarch.

Democracy is based on the concept of popular sovereignty. In a direct democracy the public plays an active role in shaping and deciding policy. Representative democracy permits a transfer of the exercise of sovereignty from the people to a legislative body or an executive (or to some combination of legislature, executive and Judiciary). Many representative democracies provide limited direct democracy through referendum, initiative, and recall.

Parliamentary sovereignty refers to a representative democracy where the parliament is ultimately sovereign and not the executive power nor the judiciary.

Views

Classical liberals such as Stuart Mill consider every individual as sovereign.
Realists view sovereignty as being untouchable and as guaranteed to legitimate nation-states.
Rationalists see sovereignty similarly to realists. However, rationalism states that the sovereignty of a nation-state may be violated in extreme circumstances, such as human rights abuses.
Internationalists believe that sovereignty is outdated and an unnecessary obstacle to achieving peace, in line with their belief of a 'global community'. In the light of the abuse of power by sovereign states such as Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, they argue that human beings are not necessarily protected by the state whose citizens they are, and that the respect for state sovereignty on which the UN Charter is founded is an obstacle to humanitarian intervention.
Anarchists and some libertarians deny the sovereignty of states and governments. Anarchists often argue for a specific individual kind of sovereignty, such as the Anarch as a sovereign individual. Salvador Dalí, for instance, talked of "anarcho-monarchist" (as usual for him, tongue in cheek); Antonin Artaud of Heliogabalus: Or, The Crowned Anarchist; Max Stirner of The Ego and Its Own; Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida of a kind of "antisovereignty". Therefore, anarchists join a classical conception of the individual as sovereign of himself, which forms the basis of political consciousness. The unified consciousness is sovereignty over one's own body, as Nietzsche demonstrated (see also Pierre Klossowski's book on Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle). See also sovereignty of the individual and self-ownership.
Imperialists hold a view of sovereignty where power rightfully exists with those states that hold the greatest ability to impose the will of said state, by force or threat of force, over the populace of other states with weaker military or political will. They effectively deny the sovereignty of the individual in deference to either the 'good' of the whole, or to divine right.

According to Matteo Laruffa "sovereignty resides in every public action and policy as the exercise of executive powers by institutions open to the participation of citizens to the decision-making processes"

Relation to rule of law

Another topic is whether the law is held to be sovereign, that is, whether it is above political or other interference. Sovereign law constitutes a true state of law, meaning the letter of the law (if constitutionally correct) is applicable and enforceable, even when against the political will of the nation, as long as not formally changed following the constitutional procedure. Strictly speaking, any deviation from this principle constitutes a revolution or a coup d'état, regardless of the intentions.

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