The past year has highlighted the importance of possessing a stable supply chain of essential healthcare supplements in most countries as nations scrambled to purchase the necessary face masks, hand sanitizers, or even more complex medical machinery on a global market where everyone else was vying for the same goods. Similarly, discussions around procurement of vaccines and around who-imports-what-and-where all seemed to lead – at one point or another – towards an increased focus on the “sovereignty” of states, which in this context means that states should be able to provide adequate medical care for their citizens without having to rely on other nations’ goodwill.
Questions of sovereignty, freedom, liberty, autonomy, and control permeate contemporary political discourse and this oversaturated discursive environment means that one rarely takes a step back and reflects on what exactly these concepts mean. As these terms come with immense emotional baggage and they generally evoke a visceral reaction – as the ‘Take Back Control’ slogan of the Brexit-campaign aptly illustrated – it is even more challenging to pick apart the various strings of meanings entangled in these concepts.
Positive and negative sovereignty
In order to get a clearer picture on what meanings “sovereignty” actually carries, one first has to address its historical evolution. In its most essential sense, sovereignty is the “supreme authority within a territory”. In its early formulations, this quality was personalised in the monarchs of European states, who possessed ‘absolute sovereignty’. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia was foundational in the development of state sovereignty, which was premised on the equality and sovereignty of its members, the states. This formulation of sovereignty was constructed on the idea that ‘the state is the political institution in which sovereignty is embodied’, thus those who possess this sovereignty are those who are free from external interference from other international actors. This aspect of sovereignty is known as ‘negative sovereignty’, analogous to concepts such as ‘negative liberty’ or ‘negative autonomy’.
However, as the following centuries of imperialism aptly illustrated, this sovereignty was not an inalienable right of every nation. Rather, negative sovereignty was conceptualised as something stemming from the ability to shape a nation’s own destiny – or positive sovereignty, a form of ‘self-mastery’. This conceptualisation was used by colonising powers to explain their vast empires and why they were right to ‘govern’ the people whom they oppressed, a mindset crystalized in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, ‘The White Man’s Burden’. Following the dissolution of European powers’ colonial empire, the newly formed international system once again, now even more explicitly, built upon the notion of ‘negative sovereignty’. Over the last few decades, there has been a shift toward a more complex understanding of the concept of sovereignty, however, popular discourse remained largely trapped in only discussing it as if it only meant a lack of external interference.
Taking back control?
The arguments used to promote Brexit serve as epitomes of the impact of this line of thinking had not only on public discourse but also on geopolitical thinking of leaders across Europe. Arguably, being a member of the European Union (EU) decreases the amount of negative sovereignty a state has – this has been pointed out by critics of the European integration, who fear that the EU in encroaching on their sovereignty. With Britain’s exit from the Union, their negative sovereignty increased, for instance they became able to strike their own trade deals. Similarly, debates around vaccine procurement have been framed in this way by state leaders critical of the European Commission. According to the Hungarian Justice Minister, Judit Varga, it was ‘sovereign nation-states’ that were actually capable of managing the coronavirus-crisis. This line of thinking is further visible in the Hungarian government’s focus on their deals struck with Russia and China to procure so-called ‘Eastern vaccines’, not approved by the European Medicines Agency. In this, according to the Hungarian government’s logic, the ‘sovereignty’ of the country, seen as their capacity to act independently of others, enabled them to better handle the pandemic.
The Dangers of a Single-Minded Approach
However, perceiving sovereignty as ‘free from intervention from others’ has serious limitations. Keeping with the examples mentioned above, while Britain regained her capacity to negotiate trade deals independently, most of the ‘new’ trade deals merely restored the ties severed with exiting the European bloc. This means that while their sovereignty increased, their ‘positive sovereignty’ actually diminished, as not all trade deals could be renegotiated in the exact same terms, so that their capacity to conduct international trade actually diminished. Similarly, while the Hungarian government benefited from their negative sovereignty to negotiate with Russia and China, it is hard to see how Hungary could have secured any ‘Western’ vaccines if these deals were not negotiated between manufacturers and the EU as a bloc, which could have led to a bidding hardly favouring smaller and less wealthy states. In this sense, the positive sovereignty of Hungary was actually bolstered by being a member of the EU.
Next steps forward?
Emmanuel Macron has been at the forefront of arguing for more ‘European sovereignty’ in issues like defence but also calling for ‘strategic autonomy’ of the EU. At this crucial point in time, amidst a global pandemic and an increasing geopolitical competition between world powers, it is truly ‘make or brake’ time for the Old Continent and thus it is essential to revisit the kind of sovereignty the EU aspires to achieve.
A continued focus on negative sovereignty would lead to the fragmentation of the EU into member states or smaller groups of countries, which might possess more manoeuvring ability, however, would be even more at the whims of other international actors in a multipolar, Hobbesian global order. If Europe and its countries wish to retain their negative sovereignty, they first must focus on this positive aspect. Mario Draghi, then-President of the European Central Bank held a speech in 2013 in which he clarified the importance of the positive sovereignty: ‘[Positive] sovereignty relates to the ability to deliver in practice the essential services that people expect from government. A sovereign that is not capable of effectively discharging its mandate would be sovereign only in name.’
A positive understanding of sovereignty would allow national leaders to reconcile the seemingly diametrically opposed demands of facing up to global challenges as a Union and still retaining their own national sovereignty. Emphasizing the positive aspect of sovereignty would allow nation states to exercise national competencies through European institutions and in the process create a Union where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This conceptual shift could facilitate certain projects, such as the common security and defence policy, reinvigorate the development of Europe-wide institutions, such as the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, or enable certain functionaries, such as the High Representative, to truly become the voice of a united Europe. If European states to survive in the increasingly competitive, multipolar international context, they must shift their conception of sovereignty from negative to positive.
Károly Gergely is a Budapest-based Hungarian freelance journalist. He completed a Russian and East European Studies master’s at the University of Oxford and currently serves as a researcher.
Image credit: “EU Flag” by EU Naval Force Media and Public Information Office is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0