Editing Sovereignty (section)

===Internal===
{{further|Free state (polity)}}
Internal sovereignty is the relationship between sovereign power and the political community. A central concern is [[Legitimacy (political science)|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]]).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Wayback Machine |url=https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62691/1/Investigating-Legitimacy-in-the-Political-Order-of-Conflict-torn-spaces.pdf |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20250120090417/http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62691/1/Investigating-Legitimacy-in-the-Political-Order-of-Conflict-torn-spaces.pdf |archive-date=2025-01-20 |access-date=2025-03-09 |website=eprints.lse.ac.uk}}</ref> [[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.<ref>{{cite web|last=Heywood|first=Andrew|title=Political Theory|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/51146058/41/Internal-sovereignty#page=108|work=pg. 92|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|access-date=25 June 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111224011743/http://www.scribd.com/doc/51146058/41/Internal-sovereignty#page=108|archive-date=24 December 2011}}</ref> 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 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 the 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.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Wolford |first1=Scott |last2=Rider |first2=Toby |title=War, Peace, and Internal Sovereignty|url=http://spot.colorado.edu/~wolfordm/implementation2.pdf|work=pg.1|access-date=19 June 2011}}{{dead link|date=April 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Wolford |first1=Scott |last2=Rider |first2=Toby |title=War, Peace, and Internal Sovereignty|url=http://spot.colorado.edu/~wolfordm/implementation2.pdf|work=pg.3|access-date=19 June 2011}}{{dead link|date=April 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> 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. While the operations and affairs within a state are relative to the level of sovereignty within that state, there is still an argument over 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 believed 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 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.<ref>{{cite web|last=Heywood|first=Andrew|title=Political Theory|url=https://www.scribd.com/doc/51146058/41/Internal-sovereignty#page=108|work=pg. 93|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|access-date=21 June 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111224011743/http://www.scribd.com/doc/51146058/41/Internal-sovereignty#page=108|archive-date=24 December 2011}}</ref>

====Modern internal sovereignty====
{{further|Tribal sovereignty}}

Within the modern governmental system, internal sovereignty is usually found in states that have public sovereignty and is 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 (legal philosopher)|John Austin]] argued that sovereignty in the UK was vested neither in the Crown nor in the people but in the "[[Queen-in-Parliament]]".<ref name="Britannica" /> 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 US, Canada, Australia and India where the government is divided into different levels.<ref>{{cite web|last=Heywood|first=Andrew|title=Political Theory|work=pgs. 94–95|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/51146058/42/External-sovereignty|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120120191845/http://www.scribd.com/doc/51146058/42/External-sovereignty|archive-date=January 20, 2012}}</ref>