The Importance of Sovereignty Today

Is the concept of sovereignty beneficial in our lives today despite the onset of globalization? While many people may argue that the benefits of globalization outweigh those of sovereignty, few would recognize the fact that there is still a need for sovereign states in our societies today in order to eliminate, for instance, the demise of the middle class, and the social disintegration between lower wage earners and higher salary earners that comes about as a result of globalization. In this essay, I argue that despite the fact that the idea of sovereignty within individual states at the present time is declining in nature as a result of globalization, sovereignty should have a role to play in our everyday lives as it offers countries with the opportunity to create their own laws that best fits their own objectives. I acknowledge that globalization and the elimination of sovereignty brought about by globalization offers many advantages to the countries involved, but show that the consequences of the onset of globalization and the elimination of sovereignty within individual states outweighs the benefits that have been brought about by globalization.

It is first important to define exactly what the key terms of this discussion are, namely "globalization" and "sovereignty". Globalization can be defined as the "ongoing movement towards economic, political, social, and cultural interdependence that has, for good or ill, reduced the autonomy of sovereign states" while sovereignty can be defined as the "principle of self-government; to say a state is sovereign is to claim that it has monopoly of force over the people and institutions in a given territorial area" (Garner et al. 455, 459). Globalization has been on the rise since the ...

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