Sovereignty

Abstract

The concept of sovereignty has always been connected with the context where it emerged to account for the idea of power in the modern political and legal reality. Its association with a territorialised, self-interested and self-sufficient model of public action has made it an instrument of protectionist and identitarian positions and target for internationalist and pluralistic criticism. But the concept has not had a steady content and it has been constantly reinterpreted to be adapted to the successive demands of democratisation and constitutionalisation. Its controversial application to the current legal and political reality has not impeded many to continue using the normative substrate of a concept that, in many of its versions, appeals to the responsibility of those who hold power.