State, sovereignty and power

In short

This topic deals with the three core concepts of political theory: the state (the political association with compulsory authority over a territory), sovereignty (its supreme, final law-making power) and power (the capacity to make others act as you wish, and how it is legitimised). It matters because every argument about federalism, rights, secession, globalisation and international law ultimately rests on what we think sovereignty means and where power actually lies. In Indian universities it is the first and most heavily weighted unit of Political Theory in UGC CBCS/NEP BA syllabi, and it recurs in UPSC CSE (GS Paper II and Political Science Optional Paper I), state PSCs, UGC-NET Political Science, and entrance tests for JNU, Jamia, Delhi University and TISS. For placement and interview purposes it is tested in law firms, policy think tanks (PRS Legislative Research, CPR, Takshashila, Vidhi), journalism, UN/NGO and civil-services interviews, and in group discussions on federalism, data sovereignty and Centre–State relations.

Explained

The state: definition, elements and distinctions

• State: a politically organised body of people occupying a definite territory, having a government and enjoying sovereignty, internal and external. (Garner's classic four-element definition.)
• Four elements: (1) Population — no minimum; (2) Territory — definite, including land, territorial waters and airspace; (3) Government — the machinery that expresses the state's will; (4) Sovereignty — supreme power, the differentiating element.
• Weber's definition: a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Key words: *monopoly*, *legitimate*, *territory*.
• State vs Nation: a nation is a people united by sentiment — common culture, language, history, "we-feeling"; a state is a legal-political entity. India = one state, many nations/nationalities (multinational state); the Kurds = a nation without a state; pre-1990 Germany = one nation, two states.
• State vs Government: the state is permanent, abstract, and has sovereignty; government is temporary, concrete, an agent of the state and exercises delegated powers. Governments change at elections; the state persists.
• State vs Society: society is wider and includes all associations (family, caste, market, religion); the state is the politically organised part with coercive authority. Civil society = the space between family and state.
• State vs Association: membership of the state is compulsory and territorial; associations are voluntary, have limited purposes, and cannot use legitimate coercion.
• Marxist "withering away": Engels' phrase — in a classless communist society the state as an instrument of class rule becomes unnecessary; the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitional stage.
• Montevideo Convention (1933) criteria for statehood in international law: permanent population, defined territory, government, and capacity to enter into relations with other states; plus the declaratory vs constitutive theories of recognition.

Theories of the origin and nature of the state

• Divine right theory: the ruler derives authority from God; obedience is a religious duty (James I, Sir Robert Filmer). Discarded — but the doctrine shaped absolute monarchy.
• Force theory: "war begat the king"; the state arose from conquest and subjugation. Explains how states expanded, not why they are obeyed.
• Social contract theory:
  • Hobbes (*Leviathan*, 1651): state of nature = "war of every man against every man", life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"; subjects surrender all rights irrevocably to an absolute sovereign; no right of revolt. Sovereignty is indivisible and unlimited.
  • Locke (*Two Treatises*, 1689): state of nature governed by natural law and natural rights (life, liberty, property); only the right to enforce (the executive power) is surrendered; government is a trust, limited and revocable — the intellectual root of liberal constitutionalism, consent and the right to resist.
  • Rousseau (*The Social Contract*, 1762): sovereignty vests in the General Will (volonté générale), which is inalienable, indivisible and infallible; the people are both sovereign and subject. The root of popular sovereignty and direct democracy — criticised as a route to majoritarian "totalitarian democracy" (J.L. Talmon).
• Evolutionary/historical theory (the accepted view): the state is the product of a slow growth through kinship, religion, property and force, and political consciousness — "the state is not made but grows" (Burgess, MacIver).
• Idealist/organic theory (Hegel, Bosanquet, T.H. Green): the state is an ethical institution, "the march of God on earth"; the individual realises freedom through the state.
• Indian traditions: Kautilya's Arthashastra — the Saptanga (seven-limb) theory of the state: *Swami* (ruler), *Amatya* (ministers), *Janapada* (territory and people), *Durga* (fort), *Kosha* (treasury), *Danda/Bala* (army, force), *Mitra* (ally); Mandala theory of circles of states; Danda-niti as the science of punishment. The Mahabharata/Shanti Parva gives a contract-like account (Matsya-nyaya, "the law of the fish", = anarchy). Gandhi's ideal of Ram Rajya and a decentralised village republic (Gram Swaraj); Ambedkar's defence of state socialism and constitutional safeguards against social tyranny.

Perspectives on the role of the state

• Liberal–individualist (negative/police state): the state is a necessary evil; functions limited to defence, law and order, contracts — laissez-faire (Adam Smith, Bentham, J.S. Mill, Spencer).
• Welfare state (positive liberalism): the state actively removes hindrances to the good life — education, health, employment, social security (T.H. Green, L.T. Hobhouse, Keynes, Beveridge). India's Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV) make it a constitutional directive; Article 38 — promote the welfare of the people; Article 39(b)-(c) — distribution of material resources.
• Neo-liberalism/libertarianism: Hayek, Nozick, Friedman — minimal "night-watchman" state; markets allocate better than planners. Reflected in India's 1991 liberalisation and the "minimum government, maximum governance" slogan.
• Marxist: the state is the "executive committee of the bourgeoisie" — an instrument of class domination; the superstructure rests on the economic base. Gramsci adds hegemony — rule by manufactured consent through civil society (schools, church, media), not just coercion; Althusser distinguishes repressive and ideological state apparatuses.
• Pluralist (Laski, MacIver, Figgis, Barker): society is federal; the state is just one of many associations, differing in function not in kind; sovereignty is divided among groups.
• Feminist: the public/private divide shields patriarchy; "the personal is political" — the state is patriarchal in its structure and its silences (domestic violence, unpaid care, marital rape exception).
• Gandhian/anarchist: the state is "violence in a concentrated and organised form"; prefers enlightened anarchy and decentralisation.
• Post-colonial/relative autonomy (Hamza Alavi, Pranab Bardhan, Partha Chatterjee): the "overdeveloped" post-colonial state inherited a strong bureaucratic-military apparatus and mediates between dominant proprietary classes rather than serving a single class.

Sovereignty: meaning, attributes, kinds and theories

• Etymology and definition: from Latin *superanus* — supreme. Jean Bodin (1576) first systematised it: "supreme power over citizens and subjects, unrestrained by law". Austin: "If a determinate human superior, not in the habit of obedience to a like superior, receives habitual obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society."
• Attributes (classical/monistic): absoluteness (no legal limit), permanence (lasts as long as the state), universality (covers all persons and associations in the territory), inalienability (cannot be given away without destroying the state), indivisibility (one sovereign only), exclusiveness, imprescriptibility.
• Kinds of sovereignty:
  1. Titular vs Real — the British Crown (titular) vs the Cabinet/PM (real); in India the President is titular, the Union Council of Ministers real.
  2. Legal vs Political — the legally competent law-maker (Parliament) vs the electorate and the forces of public opinion behind it.
  3. Internal vs External — supremacy over everything within the territory vs freedom from foreign control (independence).
  4. De jure vs De facto — legal right to command vs actual ability to command (a successful coup regime is *de facto* before it is recognised *de jure*).
  5. Popular sovereignty — the people are the ultimate source (Rousseau; "We, the people of India" in the Preamble).
  6. Westphalian sovereignty — the post-1648 norm of territorial integrity and non-intervention; Article 2(1) and 2(7) of the UN Charter codify sovereign equality and non-interference.
• Monistic (legal) theory — Bodin, Hobbes, Austin, Bentham: sovereignty is single, unlimited and indivisible; law is the command of the sovereign backed by sanction.
• Criticisms of Austin's theory: it cannot explain federations (where is the "determinate superior" in India or the USA?); it ignores customary and international law; "habitual obedience" rests on consent and legitimacy, not fear; a written constitution limits the legislature; it confuses legal power with actual influence.
• Pluralist theory of sovereignty (Laski — "it would be of lasting benefit to political science if the whole concept of sovereignty were surrendered"): sovereignty is divided among associations, limited internally by group loyalties and externally by international law and morality.
• Limitations on sovereignty in practice: constitutional limits and judicial review; fundamental rights; federal division of powers; international treaties and customary international law; WTO, IMF and human-rights regimes; supranational bodies (the EU model); globalisation, MNCs and transnational capital; the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine endorsed at the 2005 World Summit; cyberspace and data flows.
• Sovereignty in the Indian Constitution: the Preamble declares India a "SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC" ("Socialist", "Secular" and "Integrity" added by the 42nd Amendment, 1976). Article 1: "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States" — Dr Ambedkar explained "Union" was chosen deliberately because the federation is not the result of an agreement and no state has a right to secede; so the states are not sovereign. Article 3 lets Parliament alter state boundaries by a simple majority. Sovereignty is divided only as to *functions* (Seventh Schedule: Union, State and Concurrent Lists), not as to *source*. In Kesavananda Bharati (1973) the Supreme Court held that the amending power under Article 368 cannot destroy the basic structure, which includes sovereignty, the federal character and democracy — a judicially enforced limit on the legal sovereign. Note the direction of travel on federal practice: Article 370 was effectively nullified and J&K reorganised in August 2019, and the Supreme Court upheld that in *In re Article 370* (December 2023) while directing restoration of statehood.

Power, authority, legitimacy and influence

• Power: the ability of A to make B do something B would not otherwise do (Dahl); it may rest on force, rewards, persuasion or manipulation. Classical formula: power is the capacity to produce intended effects (Russell), and authority = power + legitimacy.
• Authority: *rightful* power — the recognised right to command and be obeyed. Legitimacy: the belief that authority is rightly held, which converts power into authority and makes obedience voluntary.
• Weber's three types of legitimate authority: (1) Traditional — sanctity of immemorial custom (monarchy, caste panchayats); (2) Charismatic — devotion to an exceptional individual (Gandhi, Nehru, mass-movement leaders); (3) Rational-legal — belief in impersonal rules and offices (modern bureaucracy, the Constitution). Also routinisation of charisma — charisma must become traditional or legal to survive the leader.
• Forms/faces of power:
  • Lukes' three dimensions: (1) Decision-making — who wins observable conflicts; (2) Agenda-setting / non-decision-making (Bachrach & Baratz) — the "mobilisation of bias" keeps issues off the agenda; (3) Thought control / preference-shaping — power to make people want what is against their real interests.
  • Hard, soft and smart power (Joseph Nye): coercion/payment vs attraction (culture, values, policies) vs their combination. India's soft power — yoga, films, diaspora, democracy credentials.
  • Structural power (Susan Strange): control over the structures of security, production, finance and knowledge.
  • Foucault: power is not a possession but a *relation*, capillary and everywhere; power/knowledge — discourses produce truth; disciplinary power, the panopticon, biopower and governmentality.
• Theories of the distribution of power:
  • Elitist: power is always held by a minority. Pareto and Mosca (classical), Michels' iron law of oligarchy, C. Wright Mills' power elite, Burnham's managerial revolution.
  • Pluralist: power is dispersed among competing groups; Dahl's *Who Governs?* (1961) study of New Haven — different elites win on different issues; polyarchy.
  • Marxist/class: the economically dominant class rules; the state has only relative autonomy.
  • Feminist: patriarchy as a system of power; power as "power to" (empowerment) rather than only "power over".
• Legitimacy crisis (Habermas): when the state's claim to rightfulness collapses — through performance failure, repression or a legitimation deficit — the result is a crisis, and often revolution or regime change.
• Indian application: parliamentary sovereignty is limited by judicial review; power is dispersed through cooperative and competitive federalism (GST Council under Article 279A, NITI Aayog, Finance Commission), the 73rd and 74th Amendments, 1992 (Panchayats and Municipalities — Parts IX and IXA, Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules), and the Right to Information Act, 2005 which redistributes informational power to citizens. Data and digital sovereignty are the live frontier: the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 governs personal data processing (its rules were notified in November 2025 with phased implementation, so check the current commencement dates before citing them).

Key points

• State - population + definite territory + government + sovereignty; sovereignty is the distinguishing element.
• Weber's state - the community claiming a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in a territory.
• State vs nation - the state is legal-political and territorial; the nation is psychological and cultural.
• State vs government - government is the agent; the state is permanent and holds sovereignty.
• State vs association - membership of the state is compulsory and coercive; associations are voluntary.
• Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau - absolute sovereign, limited government by trust, and the sovereign General Will respectively.
• Saptanga theory - Kautilya's seven limbs of the state: Swami, Amatya, Janapada, Durga, Kosha, Danda, Mitra.
• Sovereignty - supreme, final, absolute, permanent, universal, inalienable and indivisible legal authority (classical view).
• Austin's monistic theory - law is the command of a determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience; fails for federal states and international law.
• Pluralist sovereignty (Laski) - divided among associations and limited by international law and morality.
• Kinds of sovereignty - titular/real, legal/political, internal/external, de jure/de facto, popular.
• Article 1 - "India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States": states are not sovereign and cannot secede.
• Basic structure doctrine - Kesavananda Bharati (1973) places judicially enforced limits on the amending power, including sovereignty and federalism.
• Power - the capacity to make B act as A wishes; authority is rightful power; legitimacy is the belief that makes it rightful.
• Weber's authority types - traditional, charismatic and rational-legal.
• Lukes' three dimensions of power - decision-making, agenda-setting, and shaping preferences.
• Nye's soft power - getting outcomes by attraction rather than coercion or payment.
• Elitist vs pluralist vs Marxist - power concentrated in a minority, dispersed among groups, or held by the dominant class.
• Erosion of sovereignty - globalisation, treaties, WTO/IMF, human-rights regimes, R2P and digital data flows.

Examples

*(Political theory has no mathematical formulas; the following are solved analytical cases of the kind set in examinations and interviews.)*

Case 1 — Does Austin's theory fit India? (Step-by-step application)

1. Austin requires a *determinate human superior* receiving habitual obedience and owing obedience to none.
2. Candidate: the Union Parliament. But Parliament is created and bound by the Constitution — Article 13 voids laws violating Part III, and Article 368 is limited by the basic structure doctrine.
3. Candidate: the electorate. The electorate is indeterminate (crores of voters, no single will) — so it fails Austin's own "determinate" test.
4. Candidate: the Constitution itself. But Austin needs a *human* superior, not a document.
5. Conclusion: no Austinian sovereign exists in India. Legal sovereignty is best located in the Constitution (a limited, divided sovereignty exercised through Parliament, state legislatures and the amending body), while political sovereignty rests with "We, the people of India". This is the standard model answer for a 15-mark question.

Case 2 — Classify the sovereignty in four situations

Case 3 — Reading one event through Lukes' three dimensions A proposal to levy a new local tax is debated in a municipal council.

1. First dimension: the proposal is put to vote and defeated 30–20 — observable power of the winning bloc.
2. Second dimension: a rival proposal to tax commercial property was never tabled, because the standing committee controls the agenda — power through non-decision.
3. Third dimension: residents never demand a property-tax revaluation at all, having absorbed the idea that "taxes only rise, services never improve" — power that shapes preferences.

Conclusion: a one-dimensional study (counting votes) would have concluded power was pluralistic; the fuller analysis shows concentrated, invisible power. This is the core methodological critique of Dahl.

Case 4 — Which type of authority? (Weber applied to Indian institutions)

Case 5 — Has sovereignty been "lost" to globalisation? (A balanced answer)

1. Yes, in part: joining the WTO in 1995 bound India's tariff and patent policy (the 2005 Patents Act amendment under TRIPS); bilateral investment treaties allow foreign investors to arbitrate against the state; the IMF's 1991 conditionalities shaped the reform package.
2. No, in essence: every one of those constraints was voluntarily accepted by a sovereign act and can be exited — India withdrew from RCEP negotiations in 2019 and has terminated several bilateral investment treaties.
3. Analytical distinction: external autonomy (freedom of policy manoeuvre) has shrunk; legal sovereignty (final authority to decide, including the authority to leave) remains. Krasner's distinction between *Westphalian* and *domestic* sovereignty carries this point.
4. Conclusion: sovereignty is better described as disaggregated and pooled than as lost. Mark-scoring line: "States have traded scope for effectiveness."

Where it is used

• Civil services and state PSC examinations: UPSC GS Paper II (Indian polity, federalism, separation of powers), Political Science Optional Paper I Section A; UGC-NET Political Science Unit I; judicial services and law entrances (CLAT, AILET) in the legal-reasoning and jurisprudence sections.
• Legislative and policy research roles: PRS Legislative Research, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Centre for Policy Research, Takshashila Institution, CSDS and Observer Research Foundation — drafting briefs on Centre–State disputes, GST Council voting, Article 131 suits and data-localisation policy.
• Law and compliance: constitutional and public-law practice (writ jurisdiction, basic structure arguments), international arbitration involving state immunity, and corporate public-policy/government-affairs teams reading regulatory sovereignty risk.
• Journalism, media and content: political desks and explainer journalism on federalism rows (Governor's assent, Article 356, finance-commission devolution), where the state/sovereignty vocabulary must be used precisely.
• Development sector and international organisations: UN agencies, UNDP, bilateral donors and NGOs working on decentralisation under the 73rd/74th Amendments, Panchayati Raj capacity building and rights-based advocacy.
• Teaching, UPSC coaching and academic research: school and college political science teaching, and research on digital sovereignty, data protection under the DPDP Act, 2023, and platform regulation.

Interview questions

• Q: What distinguishes a state from a nation? A: A state is a legal-political entity with population, territory, government and sovereignty; a nation is a people bound by shared culture, language or sentiment. India is one state with many nationalities; the Kurds are a nation without a state.
• Q: Why is sovereignty called the distinguishing element of the state? A: Population, territory and government exist in other associations and in colonies too; only the state possesses supreme internal authority and external independence.
• Q: State Austin's theory of sovereignty and its main weakness. A: Austin held that a determinate human superior receiving habitual obedience and obeying none is the sovereign. Its weakness is that it cannot locate a sovereign in a federal state with a written constitution and judicial review, and it ignores customary and international law.
• Q: Where does sovereignty lie in India? A: Legal sovereignty rests in the Constitution, exercised in divided form by Parliament and the state legislatures under the Seventh Schedule; political or popular sovereignty rests with the people, as the Preamble's "We, the people of India" declares.
• Q: Are Indian states sovereign? A: No. Article 1 calls India a "Union of States"; the states derive their powers from the Constitution, have no right to secede, and Parliament can alter their boundaries under Article 3.
• Q: Differentiate power, authority and legitimacy. A: Power is the capacity to secure compliance by any means; authority is power recognised as rightful; legitimacy is the belief in that rightfulness, which turns coercion into voluntary obedience.
• Q: What are Weber's three types of authority, with an Indian example of each? A: Traditional (a hereditary village headman), charismatic (Gandhi during the national movement) and rational-legal (a civil servant acting under statute).
• Q: What does Lukes mean by the third dimension of power? A: The power to shape people's very preferences and beliefs so that they do not perceive or demand their real interests — power exercised without any observable conflict.
• Q: Has globalisation ended sovereignty? A: It has reduced policy autonomy through WTO commitments, treaties and capital mobility, but states accept those limits by sovereign choice and can withdraw; sovereignty is pooled and disaggregated rather than extinguished.
• Q: How does the Marxist view of the state differ from the liberal view? A: Liberals see the state as a neutral umpire resting on consent and protecting rights; Marxists see it as an instrument of class domination whose neutrality is an illusion, destined to wither away in a classless society.
• Q: What is Gramsci's contribution to the theory of power? A: He argued that ruling classes govern mainly through hegemony — manufactured consent produced in civil society through education, religion and media — rather than through coercion alone, so counter-hegemonic struggle is as important as seizing the state.
• Q: Does the basic structure doctrine mean the Supreme Court is sovereign? A: No. The Court does not make law; it enforces the limits inherent in the Constitution, which remains the legal sovereign, while the constituent power of the people stands above both.
• Q: Give Kautilya's elements of the state. A: The Saptanga theory lists seven limbs — Swami (ruler), Amatya (ministers), Janapada (territory and people), Durga (fort), Kosha (treasury), Danda/Bala (force), and Mitra (ally).

Common mistakes

• Using "state", "nation", "government" and "country" interchangeably, and writing "state" for a province (Maharashtra) and for the sovereign state in the same answer without distinguishing them.
• Claiming Indian states are sovereign because India is federal — sovereignty is divided only in function, not in source; Article 1 says "Union of States".
• Treating Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau as holding one "social contract theory" instead of three sharply different conclusions (absolutism, limited trusteeship, popular sovereignty).
• Presenting Austin's monistic theory as the current orthodoxy and omitting the pluralist critique and constitutional/international limits — examiners award marks for the critique.
• Confusing de jure/de facto with legal/political, and titular/real with internal/external sovereignty; they are four separate pairs.
• Equating power with authority, or legitimacy with legality — a law can be legal yet widely seen as illegitimate, and power can exist with no authority at all.
• Writing only the first dimension of power (who wins the vote) when the question asks for the forms or faces of power, and omitting Bachrach & Baratz, Lukes and Foucault.
• Quoting Article numbers and amendment years from memory without checking — misdating the 42nd Amendment (1976) or the 73rd/74th (1992), or attributing "withering away of the state" to Marx when the phrase is Engels'.

Related topics

Liberty, equality and justice · Democracy · Indian Constitution: federalism and Centre–State relations · Political ideologies: liberalism, Marxism and Gandhism · Rights and citizenship · International relations: realism and the Westphalian system