What is sovereignty anyway?

Is questioning it revolutionary, or just hot air?

Debate arose recently in the New Zealand Parliament over whether Māori had ceded sovereignty in 1840 through te Tiriti o Waitangi. That’s made all the more poignant now with the sad news that the Māori King, Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, has died.

As argued twenty years ago in my book Society and Politics, Māori didn’t intend to give up their sovereignty in 1840. But few ask: what is sovereignty?

“Sovereign” can apply to something or someone that’s supreme or superlative in some way. In the present context, we’re meaning the supreme power of a state, the basic purpose of which is the common defence and security. People can’t govern a society effectively without the sovereign power to tax. While dictionary definitions of “sovereign” haven’t changed much over time, however, the practical applications have changed dramatically. So, in whom or in what is that supreme power vested?

When the Treaty was signed in her name, Queen Victoria represented sovereignty – of a particular European kind. She was a young woman of German parentage, about to marry her German cousin. This reflected a long-standing European practice by which sovereignty was vested constitutionally in a royal personage, normally by inheritance, and monarchs were often close relatives.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and King George V of England (Victoria’s grandson) were first cousins. King George and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were also first cousins. And Wilhelm and Nicholas were third cousins, but their personal ties, and their telegrams to one another, weren’t enough to stop Russian forces from fully mobilising against Germany and Austria, propelling them all into a disastrous war.

The Great War led to the fall of royal houses in Austria–Hungary, Germany, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Royal families that survived the catastrophes, such as the British, had been constitutionally constrained to act on the advice of their ministers and to respect the law-making powers of elected assemblies. Elections were turned over to a universal franchise – whereas previously only property-owning males had had the right to vote.

This latter change reflects another long-standing tradition, in which the legitimacy of sovereign powers were seen as rooted in the consent of the people who are governed – and not so much in a monarch, as trustee of the people. A contemporary idea of popular sovereignty was consolidated through the universal franchise and the right of any citizen to stand for office.

Each country is now considered to be sovereign in an impersonal sense. The UN Charter says the organisation is “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members” (Article 2) – a principle that’s perhaps honoured more in the breach than the observance.

Meanwhile, Friedrich Nietzsche had written about “the sovereign individual” to propose that humans have become “autonomous and super-moral” creatures, able to make promises in their own right. And there was a book (which I haven’t read) published in 1997 by William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson, The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State. That shows how far the word can stretch. But it would be ludicrous of me to try to assert that I’m entirely a law unto myself.

In the British system, sovereign powers had effectively been vested in parliaments since the regime-change of 1688. The new monarchs agreed to bow to the will of “the people”, as expressed by their parliaments and executed by their ministers. But “the will of the people” is a bit of con, as not everyone gets heard or gets what they need. We get ruled over whether we asked for it or not. Hardly anyone actually “cedes their sovereignty”.

Today the British monarch is still constitutionally the sovereign, as New Zealand’s head of state – while the Governor-General is the King’s appointed “deputy”. And people talk incessantly and imprecisely about “the Crown”. When will they give that up? But, constitutionally, decisive power lies in the elected parliaments and the governments formed by the representatives after elections.

In 1840, did any of the 500 or more indigenous leaders who signed te Tiriti intend to cede sovereignty? Probably not many of them did, but we can’t go back and ask them all what they were thinking. “Sovereignty” in their lived experience, however, could not have meant for them (in translation) what it would have meant for Queen Victoria who reigned over the United Kingdom – while preparing for her wedding with Prinz Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha.

Nowadays anyone could assert themselves (collectively) as sovereign unto themselves if they want. But what does that mean in practice? Nothing much, unless they’re willing to try to secede, by whatever means, from the powers that be. Take Catalonia or Scotland, for example, where independence movements have been vigorous but unsuccessful. Brexit was about taking back sovereignty, primarily by and for the English, but many of those who voted for it now regret it.

The citizens of the former Czechoslovakia became citizens of two separate republics (Czech and Slovak) back in 1992, but there was no referendum to authorise it. The deal was done on their behalf by elites. There was no violence, but not everyone was happy about it. “The people” didn’t voluntarily transfer or cede their sovereignty to a new state.

Subjection to a sovereign power of some kind, or membership of a state, has often been seen as a contract (or social contract) as if voluntarily adopted by rational people for their own security. If you really don’t like the state you belong to, you can migrate and become a member of a different state, or start your own in a wilderness somewhere. If enough people think their rulers are tyrants, they might overthrow them and institute a new and more convenient system of government. Just ask the Americans.

Today, however, legally recognisable citizenship or membership of at least one sovereign state is a necessity, not an option. Being “stateless” is not a desirable state to be in at all. And only very rarely do people actually “cede their sovereignty” to anyone. Most of us just grew up with it as a background to our daily existence.

Māori may not have ceded sovereignty in 1840. But that was then; this is now. The statements “Māori never ceded sovereignty” and “the Crown acquired sovereignty” are not necessarily mutually contradictory. They can both be accepted as historically and practically valid – if you want. If so, then the recent argument in parliament looks pointless or at cross-purposes.

What anyone of any ethnicity thinks today about the sovereign powers they live under and tolerate – or resist – is up to them. In a free society, we’re free to differ about it.

If, however, you truly don’t accept the actual sovereignty of “the Crown” today in New Zealand, then, to be consistent with yourself, don’t apply for the dole, or enrol at uni, or vote, or put your case before a court of law, or take advantage of anything run by that wicked government that rules in the name of the Crown. Go underground and struggle for independence!

Portrait of Victoria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1843