Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group over other people. In a civil state , authority may be practiced by legislative , executive , and judicial branches of government , each of which has authority and is an authority. The term "authority" has many nuances and distinctions within various academic fields ranging from sociology to political science .
155-462: Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority . Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people and to change existing laws. In political theory , sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity . In international law , sovereignty
310-555: A senate from whom he can obtain advice, to delegate some power to magistrates for the practical administration of the law, and to use the Estates as a means of communicating with the people. Bodin believed that "the most divine, most excellent, and the state form most proper to royalty is governed partly aristocratically and partly democratically". During the Age of Enlightenment , the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as
465-745: A 59-year period during which it was recognised as sovereign by many (mostly Roman Catholic) states despite possessing no territory – a situation resolved when the Lateran Treaties granted the Holy See sovereignty over the Vatican City . Another case, sui generis is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta , the third sovereign entity inside Italian territory (after San Marino and the Vatican City State ) and
620-621: A Free King and His Natural Subjects which advocated his right to rule on the basis of the concept of the divine right of kings , a theological concept that has a basis in multiple religions, but in this case, Christianity, tracing this right to the apostolic succession . Sovereign kings and queens in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms are considered the foundations of judicial, legislative and executive authority. The foundation of American legitimate authority rests on
775-435: A bigger state nor is their governance subjected to supervision. The sovereignty (i.e. legal right to govern) however, is disputed in both cases as the first entity is claimed by Serbia and the second by Somalia . Internal sovereignty is the relationship between sovereign power and the political community. A central concern is legitimacy : by what right does a government exercise authority? Claims of legitimacy might refer to
930-400: A brilliant warrior who secularized church lands for the purpose of providing precarias (or leases) for his followers, in return for their military service. Martel's military ambitions were becoming more expensive as it changed into a cavalry force, thus the need to maintain his followers through the despoiling of church lands. Responding to Brunner's thesis, Paul Fouracre theorizes that
1085-516: A choice which is the reason of struggle between congress and the president as well as with the American courts. The latter's role is limited by the authorities' power to regulate property rights without the due process rights mandatorily applied by the courts. Feudalism Feudalism , also known as the feudal system , was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe from
1240-533: A consensus viewpoint is that England before the Conquest had commendation (which embodied some of the personal elements in feudalism) while William the Conqueror introduced a modified and stricter northern French feudalism to England incorporating (1086) oaths of loyalty to the king by all who held by feudal tenure, even the vassals of his principal vassals (holding by feudal tenure meant that vassals must provide
1395-502: A country and is not subordinate to any other government in that country or a foreign sovereign state. ( The Arantzazu Mendi , [1939] A.C. 256), Stroud's Judicial Dictionary External sovereignty is connected with questions of international law – such as when, if ever, is intervention by one country into another's territory permissible? Following the Thirty Years' War , a European religious conflict that embroiled much of
1550-569: A derived form of Latin super – "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spelling, which has varied since the word's first appearance in English in the 14th century, was influenced by the English word " reign ". The concept of sovereignty has had multiple conflicting components, varying definitions, and diverse and inconsistent applications throughout history. The current notion of state sovereignty contains four aspects: territory, population, authority and recognition. According to Stephen D. Krasner ,
1705-418: A feudal order not limited solely to the nobility. It is his radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers: while the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection – both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all
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#17327657543941860-415: A feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to provide aid or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal had to answer calls to military service by the lord. This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition,
2015-488: A formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages. Since the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown 's "The Tyranny of a Construct" (1974) and Susan Reynolds 's Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society. The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and
2170-511: A heritable factor. Authority and its attributes have been identified as of particular relevance to children as they regard their parents and teachers. The three attributes of authority have been described as status , specialist skills or knowledge , and social position . Children consider the type of command, the characteristics of the authority figure, and the social context when making authority conclusions. Although children regard these three types of authority attributes, they first assess
2325-465: A land grant in exchange for service was called a beneficium (Latin). Later, the term feudum , or feodum , began to replace beneficium in the documents. The first attested instance of this is from 984, although more primitive forms were seen up to one-hundred years earlier. The origin of the feudum and why it replaced beneficium has not been well established, but there are multiple theories, described below. The term "féodal"
2480-530: A long duration, not the micro social psychological study of children per se. There is nothing in Weber's published work in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe that directly deals with children's perceptions in "formations" with traditional legitimate authority, prior to the emergence of modern capitalism . Hofstede Insights details "Power Distance" as: "Power distance is defined as the extent to which
2635-473: A matter of fact, theorists found that during the post Cold War era many people focused on how stronger internal structures promote inter-state peace. For instance, Zaum argues that many weak and impoverished countries that were affected by the Cold War were given assistance to develop their lacking sovereignty through this sub-concept of "empirical statehood". The Roman jurist Ulpian observed that: Ulpian
2790-550: A means of political gain. For them "feudalism" meant seigneurial privileges and prerogatives. When the French Constituent Assembly abolished the "feudal regime" in August 1789, this is what was meant. Adam Smith used the term "feudal system" to describe a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations. In such
2945-531: A method for developing structure. For a while, the United Nations highly valued juridical sovereignty and attempted to reinforce its principle often. More recently, the United Nations is shifting away and focusing on establishing empirical sovereignty. Michael Barnett notes that this is largely due to the effects of the post Cold War era because the United Nations believed that to have peaceful relations states should establish peace within their territory. As
3100-421: A nation-state. An argument for political anarchy is made by Michael Huemer in his book The Problem of Political Authority . On the other side, one of the main arguments for the legitimacy of the state is some form of the social contract theory developed by Thomas Hobbes in his 1668 book, Leviathan , or by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his political writings on the social contract . In sociology , authority
3255-432: A political concept. Weber defined domination (authority) as the chance of commands being obeyed by a specifiable group of people. Legitimate authority is that which is recognized as legitimate and justified by both the ruler and the ruled. Legitimated rule results in what Weber called the monopoly over the use of coercive violence in a given territory. In the modern world, such authority is typically delegated to police and
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#17327657543943410-569: A provision that was later extended to various parts of Italian kingdom following the invasion by French troops. In the Kingdom of Naples , Joachim Murat abolished feudalism with the law of 2 August 1806, then implemented with a law of 1 September 1806 and a royal decree of 3 December 1808. In the Kingdom of Sicily the abolishing law was issued by the Sicilian Parliament on 10 August 1812. In Piedmont feudalism ceased by virtue of
3565-598: A quarter of the farmland in France and provided most of the income of the large landowners. The majority refused to pay and in 1793 the obligation was cancelled. Thus the peasants got their land free, and also no longer paid the tithe to the church. In the Kingdom of France , following the French Revolution, feudalism was abolished with a decree of 11 August 1789 by the Constituent Assembly ,
3720-573: A set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility based on the key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. In broad terms a lord was a noble who held land, a vassal was a person granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and protection by the lord, the vassal provided some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure , consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning
3875-505: A similar nesting of authority. His legitimacy must be acknowledged, not just by citizens, but by those who control other valued resources: his immediate staff, his cabinet, military leaders and in the long run, the administration and political apparatus of the entire society. Authority can be created expressly when public entities act publicly, using the same means to communicate the grant of authority to their agents that they use to communicate this to third parties, apparent authority describes
4030-434: 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
4185-407: 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
4340-642: 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. 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. 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
4495-460: A strong central authority in the form of absolute monarchy . In his 1576 treatise Les Six Livres de la République ("Six Books of the Republic") Bodin argued that it is inherent in the nature of the state that sovereignty must be: The treatise is frequently viewed as the first European text theorizing state sovereignty. Bodin rejected the notion of transference of sovereignty from people to
4650-468: A supranational organization, such as a continental union . In the case of the European Union member-states, this is called "pooled sovereignty" . Authority In the exercise of governance , the terms authority and power are inaccurate synonyms. The term authority identifies the political legitimacy , which grants and justifies rulers' right to exercise the power of government; and
4805-523: A system, wealth derived from agriculture, which was arranged not according to market forces but on the basis of customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles. Heinrich Brunner , in his The Equestrian Service and the Beginnings of the Feudal System (1887), maintained that Charles Martel laid the foundation for feudalism during the 8th century. Brunner believed Martel to be
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4960-417: 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
5115-438: Is broadly or provisionally understood as a claim to political authority that is legitimated . Historical applications of authority in political terms include the formation of the city-state of Geneva , and experimental treatises involving the topic of authority in relation to education include Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau . As David Laitin defines, authority is a key concept to be defined in determining
5270-460: Is common to all nations (jus gentium), as well as the fundamental laws of the state that determine who is the sovereign, who succeeds to sovereignty, and what limits the sovereign power. Thus, Bodin's sovereign was restricted by the constitutional law of the state and by the higher law that was considered as binding upon every human being. The fact that the sovereign must obey divine and natural law imposes ethical constraints on him. Bodin also held that
5425-450: Is feudalism?", 1944; translated in English as Feudalism ). His classic definition of feudalism is widely accepted today among medieval scholars, though questioned both by those who view the concept in wider terms and by those who find insufficient uniformity in noble exchanges to support such a model. Although Georges Duby was never formally a student in the circle of scholars around Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre , that came to be known as
5580-482: Is its degree of absoluteness . A sovereign power has absolute sovereignty when it is not restricted by a constitution, by the laws of its predecessors, or by custom , and no areas of law or policy are reserved as being outside its control. International law ; policies and actions of neighboring states; cooperation and respect of the populace; means of enforcement; and resources to enact policy are factors that might limit sovereignty. For example, parents are not guaranteed
5735-410: Is not a law" (Book II, Chapter VI) – and predicated on the assumption that the people have an unbiased means by which to ascertain the general will. Thus the legal maxim, "there is no law without a sovereign." According to Hendrik Spruyt , the sovereign state emerged as a response to changes in international trade (forming coalitions that wanted sovereign states) so that the sovereign state's emergence
5890-525: Is not always enlightened, and consequently does not always see wherein the common good lies; hence the necessity of the legislator. But the legislator has, of himself, no authority; he is only a guide who drafts and proposes laws, but the people alone (that is, the sovereign or general will) has authority to make and impose them. Rousseau, in the Social Contract argued, "the growth of the State giving
6045-729: Is now seen to have been an illegal entity by the modern Polish administration. The post-1989 Polish state claims direct continuity from the Second Polish Republic which ended in 1939. For other reasons, however, Poland maintains its communist-era outline as opposed to its pre-World War II shape which included areas now in Belarus , Czech Republic , Lithuania , Slovakia and Ukraine but did not include some of its western regions that were then in Germany . Additionally sovereignty can be achieved without independence, such as how
6200-475: Is often referred to as a feudal society , echoing Bloch's usage. Outside its European context, the concept of feudalism can be extended to analogous social structures in other regions, most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the shoguns , and sometimes in discussions of the Zagwe dynasty in medieval Ethiopia , which had some feudal characteristics (sometimes called "semifeudal"). Some have taken
6355-403: 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
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6510-517: Is practiced predominantly by the military or police force it is considered coercive sovereignty . State sovereignty is sometimes viewed synonymously with independence , however, sovereignty can be transferred as a legal right whereas independence cannot. A state can achieve de facto independence long after acquiring sovereignty, such as in the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Additionally, independence can also be suspended when an entire region becomes subject to an occupation. For example, when Iraq
6665-542: Is sovereign is not an exact science, but often a matter of diplomatic dispute. There is usually an expectation that both de jure and de facto sovereignty rest in the same organisation at the place and time of concern. Foreign governments use varied criteria and political considerations when deciding whether or not to recognise the sovereignty of a state over a territory. Membership in the United Nations requires that "[t]he admission of any such state to membership in
6820-565: Is that early forms of 'fief' include feo , feu , feuz , feuum and others, the plurality of forms strongly suggesting origins from a loanword . The first use of these terms is in Languedoc , one of the least Germanic areas of Europe and bordering Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Further, the earliest use of feuum (as a replacement for beneficium ) can be dated to 899, the same year a Muslim base at Fraxinetum ( La Garde-Freinet ) in Provence
6975-430: Is that it is a claim that must be recognized if it is to have any meaning: Sovereignty is a hypothetical trade, in which two potentially (or really) conflicting sides, respecting de facto realities of power, exchange such recognitions as their least costly strategy. There are two additional components of sovereignty that should be discussed, empirical sovereignty and juridical sovereignty. Empirical sovereignty deals with
7130-403: Is the legitimate or socially approved power which one person or a group possesses and practices over another. The element of legitimacy is vital to the notion of authority and is the main means by which authority is distinguished from the more general concept of power . Power can be exerted by the use of force or violence . Authority, by contrast, depends on the acceptance by subordinates of
7285-400: 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. Within the modern governmental system, internal sovereignty
7440-446: Is the exercise of power by a state . De jure sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; de facto sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that de jure and de facto sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization. The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin * superanus (itself
7595-607: Is the second form of post-world war change in the norms of sovereignty, representing a significant shift since member nations are no longer absolutely sovereign. Some theorists, such as Jacques Maritain and Bertrand de Jouvenel have attacked the legitimacy of the earlier concepts of sovereignty, with Maritain advocating that the concept be discarded entirely since it: Efforts to curtail absolute sovereignty have met with substantial resistance by sovereigntist movements in multiple countries who seek to " take back control " from such transnational governance groups and agreements, restoring
7750-519: 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 argued that sovereignty in the UK was vested neither in the Crown nor in the people but in the " Queen-in-Parliament ". This is the origin of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and
7905-502: 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
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#17327657543948060-480: The Führerprinzip . In 1974, the American historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown rejected the label feudalism as an anachronism that imparts a false sense of uniformity to the concept. Having noted the current use of many, often contradictory, definitions of feudalism , she argued that the word is only a construct with no basis in medieval reality, an invention of modern historians read back "tyrannically" into
8215-660: The Annales school , Duby was an exponent of the Annaliste tradition. In a published version of his 1952 doctoral thesis entitled La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise ( Society in the 11th and 12th centuries in the Mâconnais region ), and working from the extensive documentary sources surviving from the Burgundian monastery of Cluny , as well as the dioceses of Mâcon and Dijon , Duby excavated
8370-876: The Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic made the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic a sovereign entity within but not independent from the USSR. At the opposite end of the scale, there is no dispute regarding the self-governance of certain self-proclaimed states such as the Republic of Kosovo or Somaliland (see List of states with limited recognition , but most of them are puppet states ) since their governments neither answer to
8525-668: The Holocaust , the vast majority of states rejected the prior Westphalian permissiveness towards such supremacist power based sovereignty formulations and signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It was the first step towards circumscription of the powers of sovereign nations, soon followed by the Genocide Convention which legally required nations to punish genocide. Based on these and similar human rights agreements, beginning in 1990 there
8680-763: The Inca Empire , in the pre-Columbian era , as 'tributary' societies . In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, J. Horace Round and Frederic William Maitland , both historians of medieval Britain, arrived at different conclusions about the character of Anglo-Saxon English society before the Norman Conquest in 1066. Round argued that the Normans had brought feudalism with them to England, while Maitland contended that its fundamentals were already in place in Britain before 1066. The debate continues today, but
8835-529: The Second World War were regarded as sovereign despite their territories being under foreign occupation; their governance resumed as soon as the occupation had ended. The government of Kuwait was in a similar situation vis-à-vis the Iraqi occupation of its country during 1990–1991. The government of Republic of China (ROC) was generally recognized as sovereign over China from 1911 to 1971 despite
8990-534: The Soviet Union and governed locally by their pro-Soviet functionaries. When in 1991 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia re-enacted independence, it was done so on the basis of continuity directly from the pre-Soviet republics. Another complicated sovereignty scenario can arise when regime itself is the subject of dispute. In the case of Poland , the People's Republic of Poland which governed Poland from 1945 to 1989
9145-840: The consent of the governed . This understanding of political authority and the exercise of political powers in the American context traces back to the writings of the Founding Fathers , including the arguments put forward in The Federalist Papers by James Madison , Alexander Hamilton and the first chief justice of the United States John Jay , and was referenced in the unanimous United States Declaration of Independence : We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
9300-475: The divine right of kings , or to a social contract (i.e. popular sovereignty ). 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. A state that has internal sovereignty
9455-401: The general will , is inalienable, for the will cannot be transmitted; it is indivisible since it is essentially general; it is infallible and always right, determined and limited in its power by the common interest; it acts through laws. Law is the decision of the general will regarding some object of common interest, but though the general will is always right and desires only good, its judgment
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#17327657543949610-462: The lois royales , the fundamental laws of the French monarchy which regulated matters such as succession, are natural laws and are binding on the French sovereign. Despite his commitment to absolutism, Bodin held some moderate opinions on how government should in practice be carried out. He held that although the sovereign is not obliged to, it is advisable for him, as a practical expedient, to convene
9765-714: The territorial state . This form of statehood, identified with the Holy Roman Empire , is described as the most complete form of medieval rule, completing conventional feudal structure of lordship and vassalage with the personal association among the nobility. But the applicability of this concept to cases outside of the Holy Roman Empire has been questioned, as by Susan Reynolds. The concept has also been questioned and superseded in German historiography because of its bias and reductionism towards legitimating
9920-409: The " Peace of Westphalia ", but for different reasons. He created the first modern version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne [ sic ] Power" that can compel them to act in the common good. Hobbes
10075-457: The "narrow, technical, legal sense of the word." A broader definition, as described in Marc Bloch 's Feudal Society (1939), includes not only the obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm : the nobility, the clergy , and those who lived off their labour, most directly the peasantry , which was bound by a system of manorialism . This order
10230-459: The 10th century it was common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with objects of equivalent value, such as arms, clothing, horses or food. This was known as feos , a term that took on the general meaning of paying for something in lieu of money. This meaning was then applied to land itself, in which land was used to pay for fealty, such as to a vassal. Thus the old word feos meaning movable property would have changed to feus , meaning
10385-545: The 16th president of the United States Abraham Lincoln would reiterate this fundamental source of legitimacy. "Our government rests in public opinion," Lincoln said in 1856. In his 1854 speech at Peoria, Illinois , Lincoln espoused the proposition “that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own," a principle existing "at the foundation of the sense of justice." This sense of personal ownership and stewardship
10540-679: The 16th-century basis or incorporate what, in a Marxist view, must surely be superficial or irrelevant features from it. Even when one restricts oneself to Europe and to feudalism in its narrow sense it is extremely doubtful whether feudo-vassalic institutions formed a coherent bundle of institutions or concepts that were structurally separate from other institutions and concepts of the time. The term feudal has also been applied to non-Western societies, in which institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to have prevailed (see Examples of feudalism ). Japan has been extensively studied in this regard. Karl Friday notes that in
10695-712: The 1850s. Slavery in Romania was abolished in 1856. Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861. More recently in Scotland, on 28 November 2004, the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 entered into full force putting an end to what was left of the Scottish feudal system. The last feudal regime, that of the island of Sark , was abolished in December 2008, when the first democratic elections were held for
10850-923: The 1949 victory of the Communists in the Chinese civil war and the retreat of the ROC to Taiwan . The ROC represented China at the United Nations until 1971, when the People's Republic of China obtained the UN seat. The ROC political status as a state became increasingly disputed; it became commonly known as Taiwan . The International Committee of the Red Cross is commonly mistaken to be sovereign. It has been granted various degrees of special privileges and legal immunities in many countries, including Belgium, France, Switzerland, Australia, Russia, South Korea, South Africa and
11005-515: The 21st century historians of Japan rarely invoke feudalism; instead of looking at similarities, specialists attempting comparative analysis concentrate on fundamental differences. Ultimately, critics say, the many ways the term feudalism has been used have deprived it of specific meaning, leading some historians and political theorists to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society. Historian Richard Abels notes that "Western civilization and world civilization textbooks now shy away from
11160-462: The 9th and 10th centuries receded and gave way to a new feudal order wherein independent aristocratic knights wielded power over peasant communities through strong-arm tactics and threats of violence. In 1939, the Austrian historian Theodor Mayer subordinated the feudal state as secondary to his concept of a Personenverbandsstaat (personal interdependency state), understanding it in contrast to
11315-472: The 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. The classic definition, by François Louis Ganshof (1944), describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility and revolved around the key concepts of lords , vassals , and fiefs . A broader definition, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), includes not only
11470-541: The Enlightenment wrote about feudalism to denigrate the antiquated system of the Ancien Régime , or French monarchy. This was the Age of Enlightenment , when writers valued reason and the Middle Ages were viewed as the " Dark Ages ". Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the "Dark Ages" including feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current French monarchy as
11625-661: The European union have eroded the sovereignty of traditional states. The centuries long movement which developed a global system of sovereign states came to an end when the excesses of World War II made it clear to nations that some curtailment of the rights of sovereign states was necessary if future cruelties and injustices were to be prevented. In the years immediately prior to the war, National Socialist theorist Carl Schmitt argued that sovereignty had supremacy over constitutional and international constraints arguing that states as sovereigns could not be judged and punished. After
11780-517: The French Revolution, on just one night of 4 August 1789, France abolished the long-lasting remnants of the feudal order. It announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely." Lefebvre explains: Without debate the Assembly enthusiastically adopted equality of taxation and redemption of all manorial rights except for those involving personal servitude—which were to be abolished without indemnification. Other proposals followed with
11935-679: The Holy Roman Empire) by the Holy Roman Emperor, granting them seats in the Reichstag , at the time the closest permanent equivalent to an UN-type general assembly; confirmed 1620. These sovereign rights were never deposed, only the territories were lost. Over 100 modern states maintain full diplomatic relations with the order, and the UN awarded it observer status. The governments-in-exile of many European states (for instance, Norway, Netherlands or Czechoslovakia ) during
12090-514: The Latin of the Frankish laws. One theory about the origin of fehu was proposed by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870, being supported by, amongst others, William Stubbs and Marc Bloch . Kern derived the word from a putative Frankish term *fehu-ôd , in which *fehu means "cattle" and -ôd means "goods", implying "a movable object of value". Bloch explains that by the beginning of
12245-582: The Medieval period as the de jure rights of nobility and royalty. Sovereignty reemerged as a concept in the late 16th century, a time when civil wars had created a craving for a stronger central authority when monarchs had begun to gather power onto their own hands at the expense of the nobility, and the modern nation state was emerging. Jean Bodin , partly in reaction to the chaos of the French wars of religion , presented theories of sovereignty calling for
12400-538: The Roman Catholic Church with little ability to interfere with the internal affairs of many European states. It is a myth, however, that the Treaties of Westphalia created a new European order of equal sovereign states. In international law , sovereignty means that a government possesses full control over affairs within a territorial or geographical area or limit. Determining whether a specific entity
12555-505: The US, and soon in Ireland. The Committee is a private organisation governed by Swiss law. Just as the office of head of state can be vested jointly in several persons within a state, the sovereign jurisdiction over a single political territory can be shared jointly by two or more consenting powers, notably in the form of a condominium . Likewise the member states of international organizations may voluntarily bind themselves by treaty to
12710-688: The United Nations will be affected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council." Sovereignty may be recognized even when the sovereign body possesses no territory or its territory is under partial or total occupation by another power. The Holy See was in this position between the annexation in 1870 of the Papal States by Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaties in 1929,
12865-679: The Western European societies commonly described as feudal. The word feudal comes from the medieval Latin feudālis , the adjectival form of feudum 'fee, feud', first attested in a charter of Charles the Fat in 884, which is related to Old French fé, fié, Provençal feo, feu, fieu, and Italian fio . The ultimate origin of feudālis is unclear. It may come from a Germanic word, perhaps fehu or *fehôd , but these words are not attested in this meaning in Germanic sources, or even in
13020-538: The appointments, the budgeting process and has the right and capacity to review regulatory rules on a case-by-case basis. Since the time of the Reagan administration the president was informed with a cost–benefit analysis of the regulation. The creation of a regulatory agency requires an Act of Congress which specifies its jurisdiction, the related authority and delegated powers. Regulatory authorities can be qualified as independent agencies or executive branch agencies,
13175-580: The aspects of life were centred on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, and a feudal economy. In contradistinction to Bloch, the Belgian historian François Louis Ganshof defined feudalism from a narrow legal and military perspective, arguing that feudal relationships existed only within the medieval nobility itself. Ganshof articulated this concept in Qu'est-ce que la féodalité? ("What
13330-440: The authority and powers held by feudal lords , overlords , and nobles , and preferred the idea of autocratic rule where a king and one royal court held almost all the power. Feudal nobles regardless of ethnicity generally thought of themselves as arbiters of a politically free system, so this often puzzled them before the fall of most feudal laws. Most of the military aspects of feudalism effectively ended by about 1500. This
13485-478: The child, and will believe themselves that they have a duty to obey them and internalize their values. While the study of children in modern capitalist societies does look at the psychological aspects of children's understanding of legitimate authority at the level of symbolic interaction it is also true that is an extrapolated assumption based on one interpretation of a broad Comparative Historical Sociological (CHS) analysis of legitimate authority in many societies over
13640-437: The church itself held power over the land with its own precarias . The most commonly utilized precarias was the gifting of land to the church, done for various spiritual and legal purposes. Although Charles Martel did indeed utilize precaria for his own purposes, and even drove some of the bishops out of the church and placed his own laymen in their seats, Fouracre discounts Martel's role in creating political change, that it
13795-576: The complex social and economic relationships among the individuals and institutions of the Mâconnais region and charted a profound shift in the social structures of medieval society around the year 1000. He argued that in early 11th century, governing institutions—particularly comital courts established under the Carolingian monarchy—that had represented public justice and order in Burgundy during
13950-485: The continent, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established the notion of territorial sovereignty as a norm of noninterference in the affairs of other states, so-called Westphalian sovereignty , even though the treaty itself reaffirmed the multiple levels of the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire. This resulted as a natural extension of the older principle of cuius regio, eius religio (Whose realm, his religion), leaving
14105-569: The court system. Weber divided legitimate authority into three types: A constitution may define the extent of the power of rational-legal authority. Modern societies depend on legal-rational authority. Government officials are the best example of this form of authority, which is prevalent all over the world. History has witnessed several social movements or revolutions against a system of traditional or legal-rational authority started by charismatic authorities. According to Weber, what distinguishes authority from coercion , force and power on
14260-500: The death of its author Thomas Madox , in 1727. In 1771, in his book The History of Manchester , John Whitaker first introduced the word "feudalism" and the notion of the feudal pyramid. Another theory by Alauddin Samarrai suggests an Arabic origin, from fuyū (the plural of fay , which literally means "the returned", and was used especially for 'land that has been conquered from enemies that did not fight'). Samarrai's theory
14415-424: The edicts of 7 March, and 19 July 1797 issued by Charles Emmanuel IV , although in the Kingdom of Sardinia , specifically on the island of Sardinia , feudalism was abolished only with an edict of 5 August 1848. In the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia , feudalism was abolished with the law of 5 December 1861 n.º 342 were all feudal bonds abolished. The system lingered on in parts of Central and Eastern Europe as late as
14570-509: The election of a local parliament and the appointment of a government. The "revolution" is a consequence of the juridical intervention of the European Parliament , which declared the local constitutional system as contrary to human rights , and, following a series of legal battles, imposed parliamentary democracy . The phrase "feudal society" as defined by Marc Bloch offers a wider definition than Ganshof's and includes within
14725-621: The exact opposite: landed property. Archibald Ross Lewis proposes that the origin of 'fief' is not feudum (or feodum ), but rather foderum , the earliest attested use being in Vita Hludovici (840) by Astronomus. In that text is a passage about Louis the Pious that says annona militaris quas vulgo foderum vocant , which can be translated as "Louis forbade that military provender (which they popularly call "fodder") be furnished." Initially in medieval Latin European documents,
14880-532: The exercise of governmental authority. In the United States , for instance, there is a prevailing belief that the political system as instituted by the Founding Fathers should accord the populace as much freedom as reasonable; that government should limit its authority accordingly, known as limited government . Political anarchism is a philosophy which rejects the legitimacy of political authority and adherence to any form of sovereign rule or autonomy of
15035-465: The expressed and institutionally recognised right to exercise control over a territory. De facto sovereignty means sovereignty exists in practice , irrespective of anything legally accepted as such, usually in writing. Cooperation and respect of the populace; control of resources in, or moved into, an area; means of enforcement and security; and ability to carry out various functions of state all represent measures of de facto sovereignty. When control
15190-456: The feudal structure not only the warrior aristocracy bound by vassalage, but also the peasantry bound by manorialism, and the estates of the Church. Thus the feudal order embraces society from top to bottom, though the "powerful and well-differentiated social group of the urban classes" came to occupy a distinct position to some extent outside the classic feudal hierarchy. The idea of feudalism
15345-755: The feudalism analogy further, seeing feudalism (or traces of it) in places as diverse as Spring and Autumn period China, ancient Egypt , the Parthian Empire , India until the Mughal dynasty and the Antebellum South and Jim Crow laws in the American South . The term feudalism has also been applied—often pejoratively—to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes similar to those in medieval Europe are perceived to prevail. Some historians and political theorists believe that
15500-401: The fief form the basis of the feudal relationship. Before a lord could grant land (a fief ) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony , which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty . During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for
15655-404: The form of popular power, and, in more administrative terms, bureaucratic or managerial techniques. In terms of bureaucratic governance, one limitation of the governmental agents of the executive branch, as outlined by George A. Krause, is that they are not as close to the popular will as elected representatives are. The claims of authority can extend to national or individual sovereignty , which
15810-469: The government is divided into different levels. External sovereignty concerns the relationship between sovereign power and other states. For example, the United Kingdom uses the following criterion when deciding under what conditions other states recognise a political entity as having sovereignty over some territory; "Sovereignty." A government which exercises de facto administrative control over
15965-461: The highly profitable rights of justice, etc. (what Georges Duby called collectively the " seigneurie banale " ). Power in this period became more personal. This "fragmentation of powers" was not, however, systematic throughout France, and in certain counties (such as Flanders , Normandy , Anjou , Toulouse ), counts were able to maintain control of their lands into the 12th century or later. Thus, in some regions (like Normandy and Flanders ),
16120-520: The historical record. Supporters of Brown have suggested that the term should be expunged from history textbooks and lectures on medieval history entirely. In Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (1994), Susan Reynolds expanded upon Brown's original thesis. Although some contemporaries questioned Reynolds's methodology, other historians have supported it and her argument. Reynolds argues: Too many models of feudalism used for comparisons, even by Marxists, are still either constructed on
16275-451: The legitimacy of the authority figure in question using the nature of the commands they give. For example, a teacher that does not appear to have legitimate power from the child's perspective (perhaps because she or he cannot control the class well) will not be obeyed. Regarding parenting, authoritative parents who are warm and high in behavioral control but low in psychological control are more likely to be seen as having legitimate authority by
16430-475: The legitimacy of who is in control of a state and the legitimacy of how they exercise their power. Tilly references an example where nobles in parts of Europe were allowed to engage in private rights and Ustages , a constitution by Catalonia recognized that right which demonstrates empirical sovereignty. As David Samuel points out, this is an important aspect of a state because there has to be a designated individual or group of individuals that are acting on behalf of
16585-623: The less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally", which can be interpreted as respect for authority. Generally, ex-communist countries, poor countries, and non-Protestant countries have the highest power distance (respect for inequality in the distribution of power). According to Hofstede Insights 2021 country comparison, all countries with power distance below 50 are Western Protestant democracies, except for Austria. Such studies are attempts to apply ideas found in Weber that he himself did not postulate directly and they assume
16740-416: The lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. "Fealty" also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal made during homage; such an oath follows homage. Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and vassal were in
16895-482: The lord for criminal offences, including capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal court, such deliberation could include the question of declaring war. These are examples of feudalism ; depending on the period of time and location in Europe, feudal customs and practices varied. In its origin, the feudal grant of land had been seen in terms of a personal bond between lord and vassal, but with time and
17050-611: The main Western description of the meaning and power of a State. In particular, the " Social contract " as a mechanism for establishing sovereignty was suggested and, by 1800, widely accepted, especially in the new United States and France , though also in Great Britain to a lesser extent. Thomas Hobbes , in Leviathan (1651) put forward a conception of sovereignty similar to Bodin's, which had just achieved legal status in
17205-529: The middle of the 18th century, as a result of works such as Montesquieu 's De L'Esprit des Lois (1748; published in English as The Spirit of Law ), and Henri de Boulainvilliers 's Histoire des anciens Parlements de France (1737; published in English as An Historical Account of the Ancient Parliaments of France or States-General of the Kingdom , 1739). In the 18th century, writers of
17360-421: The most influential texts. In European political philosophy , the jurisdiction of political authority, the location of sovereignty , the balancing of notions of freedom and authority, and the requirements of political obligations have been core questions from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present. Most democratic societies are engaged in an ongoing discussion regarding the legitimate extent of
17515-409: The nation-state as a basic unit of "countries" rather than look at all of the various political economic "formations" in which Weber himself was most directly interested. The political authority in the British context can be traced to James VI and I of Scotland who wrote two political treatises called Basilikon Doron and The True Law of Free Monarchies: Or, The Reciprocal and Mutual Duty Between
17670-415: The noun feudalism was in use by the end of the 18th century, paralleling the French féodalité . According to a classic definition by François Louis Ganshof (1944), feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility that revolved around the key concepts of lords , vassals and fiefs , though Ganshof himself noted that his treatment was only related to
17825-444: The obligations of the warrior nobility but the obligations of all three estates of the realm : the nobility, the clergy , and the peasantry , all of whom were bound by a system of manorialism ; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society". Although it is derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum (fief), which was used during the Medieval period, the term feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as
17980-405: The one hand, and leadership , persuasion and influence on the other hand, is legitimacy. Superiors, he states, feel that they have a right to issue commands; subordinates perceive an obligation to obey (see also Milgram experiment ). Social scientists agree that authority is but one of several resources available to incumbents in formal positions. For example, a Head of State is dependent upon
18135-782: The oppression of feudal subjects with a holistic integration of political and economic life of the sort lacking under industrial capitalism. He also took it as a paradigm for understanding the power-relationships between capitalists and wage-labourers in his own time: "in pre-capitalist systems it was obvious that most people did not control their own destiny—under feudalism, for instance, serfs had to work for their lords. Capitalism seems different because people are in theory free to work for themselves or for others as they choose. Yet most workers have as little control over their lives as feudal serfs." Some later Marxist theorists (e.g. Eric Wolf ) have applied this label to include non-European societies, grouping feudalism together with imperial China and
18290-400: The order coming before capitalism . For Marx, what defined feudalism was the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy ) in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce and money rents. He deemed feudalism a 'democracy of unfreedom', juxtaposing
18445-644: The origin of power), provides that the people are the legitimate sovereign. Rousseau considered sovereignty to be inalienable; he condemned the distinction between the origin and the exercise of sovereignty, a distinction upon which constitutional monarchy or representative democracy is founded. John Locke , and Montesquieu are also key figures in the unfolding of the concept of sovereignty; their views differ with Rousseau and with Hobbes on this issue of alienability. The second book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du Contrat Social, ou Principes du droit politique (1762) deals with sovereignty and its rights. Sovereignty, or
18600-510: The people in return for his maintaining their physical safety—led him to conclude that if and when the ruler fails, the people recover their ability to protect themselves by forming a new contract. Hobbes's theories decisively shape the concept of sovereignty through the medium of social contract theories. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's (1712–1778) definition of popular sovereignty (with early antecedents in Francisco Suárez 's theory of
18755-458: The people of the state. Juridical sovereignty emphasizes the importance of other states recognizing the rights of a state to exercise their control freely with little interference. For example, Jackson, Rosberg and Jones explain how the sovereignty and survival of African states were more largely influenced by legal recognition rather than material aid. Douglass North identifies that institutions want structure and these two forms of sovereignty can be
18910-548: The pursuit of Happiness .--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed , --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Later, speeches by
19065-496: The quota of knights required by the king or a money payment in substitution). In the 20th century, two outstanding historians offered still more widely differing perspectives. The French historian Marc Bloch , arguably the most influential 20th-century medieval historian, approached feudalism not so much from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one, presenting in Feudal Society (1939; English 1961)
19220-542: The range and role of political theory, science and inquiry. The relevance of a grounded understanding of authority includes the basic foundation and formation of political, civil and/or ecclesiastical institutions or representatives. In recent years, however, authority in political contexts has been challenged or questioned. There have been several contributions to the debate of political authority . Among others, Hannah Arendt , Carl Joachim Friedrich , Thomas Hobbes , Alexandre Kojève and Carl Schmitt have provided some of
19375-494: The revision of the concept of sovereignty was made explicit with the Responsibility to Protect agreement endorsed by all member states of the United Nations. If a state fails this responsibility either by perpetrating massive injustice or being incapable of protecting its citizens, then outsiders may assume that responsibility despite prior norms forbidding such interference in a nation's sovereignty. European integration
19530-701: The right of those above them to give them orders or directives . The definition of authority in contemporary social science remains a matter of debate. Max Weber in his essay " Politics as a Vocation " (1919) divided legitimate authority into three types . Others, like Howard Bloom , suggest a parallel between authority and respect/reverence for ancestors . Max Weber , in his sociological and philosophical work, identified and distinguished three types of legitimate domination ( Herrschaft in German, which generally means 'domination' or 'rule'), that have sometimes been rendered in English translation as types of authority, because English-speakers do not see domination as
19685-428: The right to decide some matters in the upbringing of their children independent of societal regulation, and municipalities do not have unlimited jurisdiction in local matters, thus neither parents nor municipalities have absolute sovereignty. Theorists have diverged over the desirability of increased absoluteness. A key element of sovereignty in a legalistic sense is that of exclusivity of jurisdiction also described as
19840-403: The ruler (also known as the sovereign ); natural law and divine law confer upon the sovereign the right to rule. And the sovereign is not above divine law or natural law. He is above ( i.e. not bound by) only positive law , that is, laws made by humans. He emphasized that a sovereign is bound to observe certain basic rules derived from the divine law, the law of nature or reason, and the law that
19995-412: The same period or later: Counties and duchies began to break down into smaller holdings as castellans and lesser seigneurs took control of local lands, and (as comital families had done before them) lesser lords usurped/privatized a wide range of prerogatives and rights of the state, including travel dues, market dues, fees for using woodlands, obligations, use the lord's mill and, most importantly,
20150-434: The same success: the equality of legal punishment, admission of all to public office, abolition of venality in office, conversion of the tithe into payments subject to redemption, freedom of worship, prohibition of plural holding of benefices ... Privileges of provinces and towns were offered as a last sacrifice. Originally the peasants were supposed to pay for the release of seigneurial dues; these dues affected more than
20305-582: The second inside the Italian capital (since in 1869 the Palazzo di Malta and the Villa Malta receive extraterritorial rights, in this way becoming the only "sovereign" territorial possessions of the modern Order), which is the last existing heir to one of several once militarily significant, crusader states of sovereign military orders . In 1607 its Grand masters were also made Reichsfürst (princes of
20460-496: The situation when a principal has placed restrictions on an agent that are not known to a third party, and restrictions on government agents are accomplished in the open, through laws and regulations. In this setting, all parties concerned is assumed or supposed to know the laws and regulations of government. Recently the concept of authority has also been discussed as a guiding principle in human-machine interaction design. Genetic research indicates that obedience to authority may be
20615-487: The sovereign, proven illegitimate or otherwise contested and defeated for sovereignty to be genuine. International law, competing branches of government, and authorities reserved for subordinate entities (such as federated states or republics) represent legal infringements on exclusivity. Social institutions such as religious bodies, corporations, and competing political parties might represent de facto infringements on exclusivity. De jure , or legal, sovereignty concerns
20770-465: The term feudalism has been deprived of specific meaning by the many ways it has been used, leading them to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society. The applicability of the term feudalism has also been questioned in the context of some Central and Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Lithuania, with scholars observing that the medieval political and economic structure of those countries bears some, but not all, resemblances to
20925-528: The term power identifies the ability to accomplish an authorized goal, either by compliance or by obedience ; hence, authority is the power to make decisions and the legitimacy to make such legal decisions and order their execution. Ancient understandings of authority trace back to Rome and draw later from Catholic ( Thomistic ) thought and other traditional understandings. In more modern terms, forms of authority include transitional authority (exhibited in, for example, Cambodia ), public authority in
21080-414: The term could also be understood in four different ways: Often, these four aspects all appear together, but this is not necessarily the case – they are not affected by one another, and there are historical examples of states that were non-sovereign in one aspect while at the same time being sovereign in another of these aspects. According to Immanuel Wallerstein , another fundamental feature of sovereignty
21235-433: The territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres. These acquired powers significantly diminished unitary power in these empires. However, once the infrastructure to maintain unitary power was re-established—as with the European monarchies—feudalism began to yield to this new power structure and eventually disappeared. The classic François Louis Ganshof version of feudalism describes
21390-518: The transformation of fiefs into hereditary holdings, the nature of the system came to be seen as a form of "politics of land" (an expression used by the historian Marc Bloch ). The 11th century in France saw what has been called by historians a " feudal revolution " or "mutation" and a "fragmentation of powers" (Bloch) that was unlike the development of feudalism in England or Italy or in Germany in
21545-535: The trustees of public authority more and means to abuse their power, the more the Government has to have force to contain the people, the more force the Sovereign should have in turn to contain the Government," with the understanding that the Sovereign is "a collective being of wonder" (Book II, Chapter I) resulting from "the general will" of the people, and that "what any man, whoever he may be, orders on his own,
21700-400: The ultimate arbiter in all disputes on the territory. Specifically, the degree to which decisions made by a sovereign entity might be contradicted by another authority. Along these lines, the German sociologist Max Weber proposed that sovereignty is a community's monopoly on the legitimate use of force ; and thus any group claiming the right to violence must either be brought under the yoke of
21855-440: The vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, whether manorial , baronial, both termed court baron , or at the king's court. It could also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also included sentencing by
22010-472: The vassal/feudal system was an effective tool for ducal and comital control, linking vassals to their lords; but in other regions, the system led to significant confusion, all the more so as vassals could and frequently did pledge themselves to two or more lords. In response to this, the idea of a "liege lord" was developed (where the obligations to one lord are regarded as superior) in the 12th century. Around this time, rich, "middle-class" commoners chafed at
22165-477: The world to pre World War II norms of sovereignty. There exists perhaps no conception the meaning of which is more controversial than that of sovereignty. It is an indisputable fact that this conception, from the moment when it was introduced into political science until the present day, has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon. Lassa Oppenheim (30-03-1858 – 07-10-1919), an authority on international law An important factor of sovereignty
22320-549: Was a practical expression of this circumscription when the Westphalian principle of non-intervention was no longer observed for cases where the United Nations or another international organization endorsed a political or military action. Previously, actions in Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo , Somalia , Rwanda , Haiti , Cambodia or Liberia would have been regarded as illegitimate interference in internal affairs. In 2005,
22475-641: Was established. It is possible, Samarrai says, that French scribes, writing in Latin, attempted to transliterate the Arabic word fuyū (the plural of fay ), which was used by the Muslim invaders and occupiers at the time, resulting in a plurality of forms – feo, feu, feuz, feuum and others—from which eventually feudum derived. Samarrai, however, also advises to handle this theory with care, as Medieval and Early Modern Muslim scribes often used etymologically "fanciful roots" to support outlandish claims that something
22630-513: Was expressing the idea that the emperor exercised a rather absolute form of sovereignty that originated in the people, although he did not use the term expressly. Ulpian's statements were known in medieval Europe , but sovereignty was an important concept in medieval times. Medieval monarchs were not sovereign, at least not strongly so, because they were constrained by, and shared power with, their feudal aristocracy . Furthermore, both were strongly constrained by custom. Sovereignty existed during
22785-501: Was first used in 17th-century French legal treatises (1614) and translated into English legal treatises as an adjective, such as "feodal government". In the 18th century, Adam Smith , seeking to describe economic systems, effectively coined the forms "feudal government" and "feudal system" in his book The Wealth of Nations (1776). The phrase "feudal system" appeared in 1736, in Baronia Anglica , published nine years after
22940-400: Was integral to the practice of self-government as Lincoln saw it by a Republican nation and its people. This was because, as Lincoln also declared, "No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent." The U.S. president is called to give account to the legislature for the conduct of the whole government, including that of regulatory agencies. The president influences
23095-474: Was not inevitable; "it arose because of a particular conjuncture of social and political interests in Europe." Once states are recognized as sovereign, they are rarely recolonized, merged, or dissolved. Today, no state is sovereign in the sense they were prior to the Second World War. Transnational governance agreements and institutions, the globalized economy, and pooled sovereignty unions such as
23250-497: Was of Arabian or Muslim origin. Feudalism, in its various forms, usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire: such as in the Carolingian Empire in the 9th century AD, which lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure necessary to support cavalry without allocating land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and their power over
23405-556: Was overrun by foreign forces in the Iraq War of 2003 , Iraq had not been annexed by any country, so sovereignty over it had not been claimed by any foreign state (despite the facts on the ground ). Alternatively, independence can be lost completely when sovereignty itself becomes the subject of dispute. The pre-World War II administrations of Latvia , Lithuania and Estonia maintained an exile existence (and considerable international recognition) whilst their territories were annexed by
23560-642: Was partly since the military shifted from armies consisting of the nobility to professional fighters thus reducing the nobility's claim on power, but also because the Black Death reduced the nobility's hold over the lower classes. Vestiges of the feudal system hung on in France until the French Revolution of the 1790s. Even when the original feudal relationships had disappeared, there were many institutional remnants of feudalism left in place. Historian Georges Lefebvre explains how at an early stage of
23715-417: Was simply a military move in order to have control in the region by hording land through tenancies, and expelling the bishops who he did not agree with, but it did not specifically create feudalism. Karl Marx also uses the term in the 19th century in his analysis of society's economic and political development, describing feudalism (or more usually feudal society or the feudal mode of production ) as
23870-405: Was thus the first to write that relations between the people and the sovereign were based on negotiation rather than natural submission. His expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty. Hobbes strengthened the definition of sovereignty beyond either Westphalian or Bodin's, by saying that it must be: Hobbes' hypothesis—that the ruler's sovereignty is contracted to him by
24025-491: Was unknown and the system it describes was not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the medieval period. This section describes the history of the idea of feudalism, how the concept originated among scholars and thinkers, how it changed over time, and modern debates about its use. The concept of a feudal state or period, in the sense of either a regime or a period dominated by lords who possess financial or social power and prestige, became widely held in
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