Sovereignty Response Paper

In political science, theorists and academic experts interested in defining and explaining  aspects of government and society are constantly seeking the best suitable arguments and points of views in their research studies. For instance, this past week, the readings that were assigned were Soverignty by Robert Jackson, Soverignty by Hinsley and the limits of the state: Beyong statist approaches and their critics by Timothy Mitchell. Each reading talked about soverignty and the state in a unique way as well as discussing and developing and argument.

            The reading on Soverignty by Robert Jackson was the reading that contributed to most of the discussion on Thursday. During the discussion, the concept of “Responsibility” was brought up and stirred several opinions. For example Hannah mentioned responsibility is potential way to circumvent sovereignty of a country. A country’s sovereignty is a powerful governmental and institutional tool abused within many countries and leaders to pursue a pervasive agenda against the population of a country. I also supported Hanna’s point of view because I have the conviction that sovereignty is definitely abused by political leaders that have access to the power apparatus of a country. Moreover, Chad mentioned an excellent perspective by arguing other factors have the potential and capability to circumvent sovereignty such as ideology. A country’s ideology is an essential aspect of a country’s identity and sovereignty can be affected because decisions can be subjective. For instance, a country such as Britain may say it will not intervene in syria now but then months later Britain’s leaders may change their mind and decide to actually intervene militarily in syria. Ideology in my opinion is subjected and tied to interests and convenience.

            Concepts such as sovereignty, and responsibility make perfect sense in paper but when applied in real life, these concepts are vague and vulnerable for interpretation. For instance, the recent events happening in Syria and the possible limited strike attacks by the United States were discussed. Syria is the perfect example where responsbility is clearly violated by Assad because he ordered the usage of chemical weapons onto his own syrian population. Syria is a recognized sovereign country and has the power and the autonomy to do what he thinks is best for his country and its population along with their own domestic challenges. The concepts of sovereignty, capacity, responsibility, independence, authority, supremacy are all questioned in the syrian example. Political scientists and theorists know these concepts must be follow and applied as define, but I believe these concepts only serve as a guide to maintain order in a society, there is not a fit-all-solution.

            The second reading on sovereignty by Hinsley was not discussed much in detail but it was a very interesting piece of writing by Hinsley. What I learned from Hinsley's argument was how the debate about sovereignty has been  actively happening at different stages within different societies. I do not agree with Hinsley when he tries to argue that government and society are identitical or if government and society have different origins. I do believe that a society, which is composed of a group of people living together in a more or less organized community demand and need a certain type of government. I would argue a country’s population need a tailored governmental structure and not a specific kind of governmental and institutional power apparatus such as democracy.

For instance, political scientists usually want to argue and find an explanation of why it is critically difficult to implement democracy in African countries. Hinsley mentiones African countries and comes with two concepts and these are stateless societies and primitive societies. In stateless societies, power resides within lineage and not in a centralized and organized power structure. On the other hand, primitive societies have an organizational arm structure based on tribal leaders but not aligned by lineage. In the case of African countries, sovereignty  in my opinion is non-existant because almost all of the african countries are mired in economic harships, civil wars, famine and are victims and subjected to a neo-colonialism. Why a neo-colonialism? Because foreign countries are currently involved in african countries exploiting the natural resources and abusing the african people.

Sovereignty is the most vulnerable in the continent of African and examples can be found in Ivory-Coast in its civil war, in Ethiopia where Arab Emirates is involved in exploiting agriculture and other natural resources, Sierra Leone where european nations are exploiting the business of dimonds are other precious metals out of the countries' resourceful lands. In this sense, I do agree with Hinley’s point of view that sovereignty is debated at different stages in different societies.

The third and last reading on Timothy Mitchell with the limits of the state. Again, Timothy Mitchell also struggles with defining state and society. Timothy develops an entire argument discussing about talking about state and society and their differences. Timothy’s reading was the most challenging for the class to comprehend because it was wordy and very detailed-oriented. I in particular agree with Timothy’s third approach that he mentioned in this reading. Timothy’s approach says, “that the elusiveness of the state-society boundary needs to be taken seriously, not as a problem of conceptual precision, but as a clue to the nature of the phenomenon. Rather ran searching for a definition that will fix the boundary, we need to examine the detail political processes through which the uncertain yet powerful distinction between society is produced” (78). I agree with Timohty Michell because he allows a sense of flexibility to complex social issues attributed to concepts such as “state” and “society”. Societies live within states and in many cases societies are devided within nationalities and ethnicities. On the other hand, I strongly disagree with Timothy Mitchell beause he argues there is not distinction between a state and society. A state holds the reigns and the power apparatus together with the help of its institutions whether they are branches of government, governmental agencies and services such as transportation, police, food, education, work etc. However, a society I believe can be equally stronger and influencial. The people have the power  to persuade their government to change the way their government leaders are running a country and enforcing laws.

I believe that a state and society are different in their duties, influence and power but both balance each other in the process. I do not believe the state is more powerful than society, rather the state and society need to work in conjuntion and cooperation in order to stabilize social issues, the imbalance of power, wants and needs, order and progressiness within a country.