Sovereignty enables Stability: CG7

Freedom from Outside Interference

The wealth distributed to respond to the imperatives-CG6 comes from wider society. But a society can only prosper where the people, despite their many differences, are able to live peacefully together.

People must actually be able to cooperate despite those inside or out preferring fraud and violence to achieve their ends.

For such a state of unity to be possible in political terms, a society requires two things:

  1. a centralized monopoly on the use of violence within society i.e. the government must provide for a police force and criminal justice system;
  2. sovereignty i.e. the ability to determine its own fate and future without legal interference from outside society.i.e. the government must provide fora state i.e. military, intelligence and diplomatic services.

Unity and stability is the chief preoccupation of a sovereign society.

The vision of unity to enable stability that requires sovereignty.

Stability, peace and order can be handled politically through the government and the citizenry working in concert. Ideally, the state does not need to be involved internally. However, the state must be there as a fall-back to deal directly and decisively (but non-politically) with extreme manifestations of distress and dissatisfaction.

Societal sovereignty involves engagement with all aspects of social life, which means here the handling of all 7 arenas of social responsibility.

Most of the time (and in the absence of civil disorder) people go about activities of all sorts non-reflectively and unquestioningly. This taken-for-granted, spontaneous functioning, called «mass action» constitutes the stable social order that feels natural to all. Read more.

So the sovereignty-CG71 of a society is based on simultaneously engaging with all responsibilities and commitments-CG1.

CL1: Unavoidable current differentials in group power are regarded as natural; if geographical, differences do not provoke urges to secede; if socio-economic, differences do not provoke turmoil and violence.

CL2: Rule of law in a sovereign society will be accepted and respected as obligatory for all—and not subject to external powers or impositions.

CL3: Official decisions are supported self-interestedly because society as a whole benefits by unequivocal support of its officials.

CL4: Societal issues are formally recognized so that authorities can take appropriate action.

CL5: The public interest is openly pursued because clarity of values and goals is possible given the absence of any higher authority and the presence of unity.

CL6: Moral institutions are justifiably sustained—so enabling existing ethical standards to provide a benchmark for behaviour and keep disruptive elements at bay.

CL7: Communal needs of each and all are fairly handled—because not responding to genuine diversity within a unified society feels intolerable to citizens (as well as provoking turmoil that belies unity and threatens instability).

Sovereignty

The Heptad, Sovereignty-CG71, reflects much of what we have discovered about politics. When pursuing any societal course, politics must enable diversity to be handled in a way that treats each and all fairly so far as is possible—whilst most remain fully aware that the powerful dominate, that corruption and injustice remain, and that many expectations of government will not be met.

Different value systems (beliefs) conflict in regard to certain needs. The most to expect from groups, given such diversity, is peaceful coexistence. But that is more than enough for community life and for a viable politics within a sovereign society—as long as there is a sense of fairness.

Sovereignty therefore implies the capacity and desire for a society to change itself in the direction of more fairness in regard to personal needs.

This is less likely to occur in an authoritarian society. Even in a more mature society, the powerful groupsmay not share this view, and so change leading to greater injustice may well occur. But such change is self-defeating in regard to unity. That is not good for powerful groups because sooner or later, society is liable to split or many become resentful, perhaps to the point of abandoning politics for violence.

The danger associated with injustice emerges from the inherent duality: tension v action i.e. as tension builds up, a readiness for action builds in affected groups. Read more on the tension v action duality.

Sovereignty-CG71 is the precondition for a stability that permits change to deal with discontent. Stability and unity are also intrinsic to prosperity. Any significant general or even localized decrease in prosperity becomes stressful for all, and potentially destabilizing if severe enough.

The function of sovereignty is therefore … to ensure that everyone feels sufficiently integrated and sufficiently prosperous to have a stake in society, a stake that inhibits violence as a method to force the government to change course when there is distress and discontent.

Conclusion

We commenced with the notion that participating in social life is an expression of political responsibility. It is now evident that political participation flows from:

By differentiating arenas of responsibility within a sovereign society, a natural and healthy commitment to a stable society is possible for everyone—as detailed in CG1.

All possible groupings of adjacent levels have now been considered.

Originally posted: August-2009; Last updated: 8-Jun-2015