Is Sovereignty Being Limited or Enhanced by Globalisation?

Sovereignty once meant something simple: a state held supreme, unchallenged authority over its territory and people, and no outside power could interfere. This is the classical idea born from the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which gave us the principles of territorial integrity and non-interference. For centuries it held firm. But globalisation has scrambled this neat picture. Today, trade rules are written in Geneva, climate targets are negotiated in international summits, and human rights norms cross borders freely. So a pressing question arises in International Relations: is sovereignty being chipped away by globalisation, or is it actually being reshaped into something stronger? The answer is more interesting than a simple yes or no.

What sovereignty traditionally meant 🔗

Classical sovereignty rested on the idea that the state was the highest authority within its borders. It had two faces. Internal sovereignty meant the state controlled everything within its territory: laws, order, and public services. External sovereignty meant no other state or body could dictate what happened inside those borders. This Westphalian model treated sovereignty as absolute, indivisible, and exclusive. A state either had full authority or it did not.

For a long time this worked. States made their own economic policies, defended their own borders, and treated their citizens however they wished without external review. The international system was, in theory, a collection of these self-contained units. But this model assumed a world of relatively isolated nations. Globalisation has demolished that assumption.

How globalisation created new authority networks 🔗

The defining feature of globalisation is interconnectedness. Economies, communication systems, security threats, and environmental problems now spill across borders effortlessly. To manage this interconnected world, an entire web of new authority networks has emerged that sits alongside, and sometimes above, the nation-state.

These networks include international organisations like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, which influence state policy on everything from trade to security. They include non-governmental organisations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, which pressure governments on human rights and environmental matters. And they include multinational corporations whose economic weight rivals that of medium-sized countries. Scholars describe this shift as the rise of global governance, where collective interests on a global scale are articulated through formal and informal institutions involving states, markets, and citizens together.

The role of international regimes 🔗

A key concept here is the international regime: a set of rules, norms, and procedures that states agree to follow in a particular area. Trade regimes, environmental regimes, and human rights regimes all bind states to standards they did not invent on their own. What makes human rights regimes especially striking is that, unlike regimes governing trade or security, they constrain governments in how they treat their own citizens. This is a direct reach into the domestic space that classical sovereignty considered untouchable.

Since the end of the Second World War, the international community has built a dense framework of human rights treaties and conventions founded on the belief that states have an obligation to respect their citizens’ rights, and that these rights can be of legitimate concern to other states. The same is happening with the environment, where climate agreements ask states to adjust domestic economic policy for a shared planetary good.

The case that sovereignty is being limited 🔗

There is a strong argument that all of this erodes sovereignty. Increasing interdependence has compelled states to accept limitations on their external sovereignty. A country that wants to participate in the global economy must accept the rules of the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. It cannot simply opt out without serious cost.

Economic interdependence is the clearest example. Governments find it hard to regulate their economies independently when multinational corporations, global financial markets, and international trade policies all shape outcomes. A financial crisis in one part of the world can ripple outward and limit a state’s ability to protect its own economy from external shocks. On the political side, the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), promoted by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty and endorsed at the 2005 UN World Summit, holds that when a state fails to protect its citizens from atrocities, responsibility shifts to the international community. In other words, sovereignty is no longer an automatic shield against outside intervention.

The case that sovereignty is being enhanced 🔗

Here the story takes an unexpected turn. A growing body of scholarship argues that globalisation does not simply weaken the state; in many ways it strengthens it. The reasoning is that the enhanced flow of goods, services, and people can only occur through an institutional framework that national governments provide and manage. Someone has to negotiate trade deals, enforce contracts, build infrastructure, and maintain stability. That someone is the state.

One influential view describes states as “catalytic states” that build rather than shed power by forming collaborative arrangements to gain more real control over their economies and security. Far from disappearing, the nation-state has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility, adapting its traditional functions to accommodate global forces. Sovereignty, in this reading, is not a fixed quantity that gets used up. It can be divided, shared, and exercised through external platforms, giving the state a political voice in arenas it could never reach alone.

Pooled sovereignty in practice 🔗

The idea of pooled sovereignty captures this well. When states join an international body, they surrender a slice of independent decision-making, but in exchange they gain a seat at a table where collective decisions are made. A single state acting alone has little influence over global trade rules or climate policy. By pooling sovereignty, it gains leverage over outcomes that affect it directly. The European Union is the textbook example: member states abide by common rules and policies, yet they collectively shape a market and a political bloc far more powerful than any of them individually.

The transformationalist middle ground 🔗

The most convincing answer comes from a school of thought known as transformationalism. To understand it, it helps to know the three classic positions in the globalisation debate, associated with scholars like David Held and Anthony Giddens.

The hyperglobalists argue that globalisation is an irresistible force and that nation-states are losing their sovereignty over economic, political, and cultural life. The sceptics push back, claiming the impact of globalisation is overstated and that states remain firmly in control. The transformationalists reject both extremes. They neither announce the death of the sovereign state nor insist that nothing has changed.

Instead, transformationalists argue that a new “sovereignty regime” is displacing the old conception of statehood as absolute and territorially exclusive. Sovereignty today is best understood less as a barrier marking off territory and more as a bargaining resource for a politics built on complex transnational networks. Authority has become diffused among public and private agencies operating at local, national, regional, and global levels. The state is being reshaped, not erased.

The state acquiring new capacities 🔗

This is the heart of the matter. As globalisation redefines the state’s role, the state delegates some traditional functions to international bodies while acquiring entirely new capacities. It learns to negotiate in multilateral forums, to coordinate across borders on terrorism and disease, to attract foreign investment, and to shape global standards. These are powers the classical Westphalian state never needed and never had. So while the state gives up exclusive control in some areas, it gains influence and reach in others.

What this looks like in the Indian context 🔗

India’s experience illustrates the transformationalist argument well. By embracing globalisation, India has expanded rather than diminished its capabilities. The country’s digital transformation through initiatives like Digital India and Aadhaar shows how a state can harness global technology and capital to strengthen domestic governance, promote financial inclusion, and raise its international standing.

At the same time, India accepts constraints. As a member of the WTO it must follow trade rules. As a signatory to climate agreements it commits to emissions targets. As a participant in the global human rights framework it accepts a degree of international scrutiny. Yet none of this has made India less of a state. It has arguably made the Indian state more capable, more connected, and more influential on the world stage. The slice of autonomy given up is traded for a louder voice in decisions that shape the country’s future.

So, limited or enhanced? 🔗

The honest conclusion is that sovereignty is being neither simply limited nor simply enhanced. It is being transformed. The absolute, indivisible sovereignty of 1648 has given way to a flexible, layered, and negotiated sovereignty suited to an interconnected world. States have lost the ability to act in total isolation, but they have gained tools to manage problems no single state could solve alone, from climate change to financial instability to transnational crime.

Crucially, this transformation does not mean the state is fading away. States remain the primary actors in international relations, responsible for law and order, public services, and representing their citizens globally. They even design and run the very institutions that appear to constrain them. The real lesson is that sovereignty has proven adaptable. Rather than breaking under the pressure of globalisation, it has bent and evolved, which may be exactly why the nation-state has survived as the central unit of world politics.

What do you think? Does pooling sovereignty in bodies like the WTO and UN make a country like India weaker by tying its hands, or stronger by giving it a voice in decisions it could never influence alone? And if absolute sovereignty no longer exists, should we abandon the Westphalian idea entirely, or does it still serve a purpose in protecting smaller states from interference?

References

1. https://www.cfr.org/reports/global-human-rights-regime
2. https://www.e-ir.info/2022/05/16/the-state-and-globalisation/
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201545
4. https://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/emergence.pdf
5. https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1271&context=ijgls
6. https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/globalization/globalisation-and-the-sovereignty-of-the-state/48532
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331262175_Does_globalisation_reduce_state_sovereignty
8. https://testbook.com/question-answer/three-part-typology-of-the-theories-of-globalizati–64abca7fc43871cdc4226a5b
9. https://philpapers.org/archive/HOSOTI-2.pdf