{"id":12414,"date":"2020-11-15T07:36:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-15T07:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=12414"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","slug":"why-language-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2020\/11\/why-language-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why language matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Language is not neutral.\u00a0 Words convey meaning and prisms through which meaning is established.\u00a0 But words can also be prisons.\u00a0 And few terms confine us more than sovereignty<\/em>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Its origins are instructive.\u00a0 Like much political theory, sovereignty has roots in theology.\u00a0 The Sovereign was the Jealous One, the Indivisible, the Unlimited, the All Powerful in perpetuity.\u00a0 It is hardly surprising that this understanding of the deity would translate into politics.\u00a0 Monarchs saw themselves as sovereigns bounded only by territory, insisting that sovereign rule should not be challenged.\u00a0 It was unlimited, undivided, unaccountable<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Over time, sovereignty passed from the monarch to the people in many places.\u00a0 It was still a fiction but a useful fiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lacking a political crisis or rupture that might have democratised sovereignty, the UK \u2018modernised\u2019 monarchical rule with the oxymoron of the Crown in Parliament<\/em>.\u00a0 But what happens when the Crown and Parliament disagree?\u00a0 We can be grateful to Boris Johnston for highlighting that possibility even in today\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

There have, of course, been other attempts to \u2018modernise\u2019 sovereignty.\u00a0 Post-sovereignty essentially retains the term but abandons its meaning.\u00a0 As Don Herzog in his new book Sovereignty RIP<\/em><\/a> notes:<\/p>\n

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It might sound logically confounding to say that sovereignty is unlimited, undivided, and unaccountable authority, and then talk about campaigns to limit it, divide it, and hold it accountable. It would perhaps be clearer to think of sovereignty as a theory of state authority and then talk about limiting, dividing, and holding accountable state authority. But what can I do? That\u2019s overwhelmingly not the way my sources talk and I am cheerfully at their mercy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, better to abandon the meaning and retain the word but better still abandon the idea altogether.\u00a0 But, as Herzog notes, \u2018subjects and others must not peek behind the curtain. Instead they must be dazzled by the image on the screen.\u2019<\/p>\n

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This is not to dismiss the power of the sovereignty myth.\u00a0 The idea can and has mobilised people.\u00a0 \u2018Take back control\u2019 is one of the most potent.\u00a0 This is sovereignty at its most pernicious.<\/p>\n

Sovereignty and binary traps<\/h2>\n

Sovereignty traps us into thinking that constitutional power must be indivisible and unlimited<\/em><\/strong>, if not unaccountable<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Enoch Powell, the late twentieth century high priest of sovereignty, saw threats to Parliamentary sovereignty coming from sources he opposed \u2013 devolution and the European Community.\u00a0 Powell found it \u2018very reassuring\u2019 during debates in the 1970s \u2018to find that the House of Commons still has its old sense of its jealous, exclusive, overall, omnicompetent jurisdiction and sovereignty in the United Kingdom.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Powell was resurrecting Dicey\u2019s arguments against Irish home rule<\/a> from the previous century.\u00a0 For Dicey, Parliamentary sovereignty was the \u2018dominant characteristic of our political institutions\u2019 and therefore the choice was binary.\u00a0 Ireland could be an independent state but it could not have home rule.\u00a0 Powell\u2019s argument was based on a simple premiss: \u00a0sovereignty was indivisible and unlimited in perpetuity.\u00a0Devolution and European Community membership were incompatible with Parliamentary sovereignty.\u00a0 The argument was logical so long as the premiss was accepted.\u00a0 By accepting the sovereignty premiss, as many have done, makes it difficult to imagine shared power.<\/p>\n

But Dicey and Powell were inconsistent sovereigntists.\u00a0 Both supported a referendum when it suited.\u00a0 So too their disciplines today.\u00a0 Brexiteers invoke Parliamentary sovereignty when it suits but not when they fear Parliament might overrule the results of the 2016 referendum.<\/p>\n

It is time to take the old biblical exhortation seriously, Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s<\/em> (<\/em>Matthew 22:21).\u00a0 We should render sovereignty unto God and find more appropriate earthly language and ideas.<\/p>\n

Back in the real world<\/h2>\n

There is far better language to conduct constitutional debate and there are few better conceptual tools than power<\/em>, albeit it is a highly contested idea.\u00a0 The notion that power cannot be shared or that there is an ultimate resting place of power is easily disproved.\u00a0 But first it is important to note that what sovereigntists are really referring to is only one form of power \u2013 legal constitutional power.\u00a0 The weakness of the sovereigntist position is not only that it is based on a fable but that it misses so much.<\/p>\n

Economic interdependence can enhance autonomy, welfare and indeed state power.\u00a0 The UK has devolved government but that has addressed only part of the problem.\u00a0 Stein Rokkan<\/a>, the great Norwegian political scientist (frequently quoted but sadly rarely read), defined \u2018centres\u2019 as \u2018privileged locations within territory\u2019 and noted that such privileged locations might be political, economic, cultural and military.\u00a0 Not only do polities need to address devolving constitutional\/political power but they need to consider other privileged locations of power.\u00a0 The political\/constitutional focus is understandable but much constitutional debate has neglected the concentration of economic power in these islands.\u00a0 There is a strand of Scottish nationalism, currently in the ascendancy, that seems at ease with the concentration of economic power.\u00a0 It may imagine that becoming a \u2018sovereign state\u2019 will magically shift economic power northwards.\u00a0 Constitutional independence would be no guarantee that this would change.<\/p>\n

There are other sources of constitutional power including economic power.\u00a0 The notion that a \u2018sovereign state\u2019 has unlimited, undivided, and unaccountable<\/em><\/strong> power is at best absurd, at worst dangerous.\u00a0 A polity may have abundant sovereignty but this does not translate into power.<\/p>\n

We also know that power can be divided<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 It is not difficult to imagine what this might look like \u2013 not least as there are ample examples from history and in our own time.\u00a0 And it need not be a choice between different variants of federalism or for a confederal arrangement.\u00a0 Some hybrid arrangement is not only conceivable but almost unavoidable.\u00a0 Even the constitutionally weak institutions may have considerable power.\u00a0 Local government power has been eroded and, from a sovereigntist perspective, could even be abolished altogether.\u00a0 But try delivering public services with only a central government.\u00a0 It cannot be done.\u00a0 Central government is dependent on local authorities to a far greater degree than is often appreciated.\u00a0 This dependence is a form of power.<\/p>\n

World of possibilities<\/h2>\n

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Endless possibilities open up when sovereignty is buried.\u00a0 The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) where binary sovereignty claims had been dominant involves a remarkable hybrid with (quasi-)federal, confederal and consociational elements:<\/p>\n