Future of the “sovereign” Nation-State – A new spiritual perspective 2025
Abstract
For a very long time, including up to the present day, the nation-state, or simply the “state”, has been the preeminent institution of the world order, around which the global system has been constructed. It is a concept of geo-political organisation that divides up areas of the planet, mainly the dry land,and the people thereof, into discreet areas that are asserted as being exclusively under the jurisdiction and control of a single system of government of some kind.
References
The reference to “nation” as used in this paper is not to be interpreted as a reference just to a nation or country with a single ethnicity. Rather the word is used in the sense of a geo-political entity comprising one nation-state whether or not its population has multiple ethnicities.
The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, Shoghi Effendi, (US Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1991).
“The Peace of Westphalia .. is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire, closing a calamitous period of European history that killed approximately eight million people. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, the kingdoms of France and Sweden, and their respective allies among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, participated in the treaties….
Several scholars of international relations have identified the Peace of Westphalia as the origin of principles crucial to modern international relations, collectively known as Westphalian sovereignty. However, some historians have argued against this, suggesting that such views emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth century in relation to concerns about sovereignty during that time.”(Wikipedia)
Under the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, such a state must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). His famous work was the Leviathan.
Charter of the United Nations,Article 2.1.
Ibid, Articles 2.4 and 2.7 and Chapter VII. It has to be said that the United Nations, in combining the quest for world peace whilst largely retaining the concept of state sovereignty as the basis of world order, has to some extent at least failed in its most basic objectives, in that violent conflicts and the threats of same have still continued in the world since its formation.
Jared Diamond, in The World Until Yesterday, (Viking, 2012) suggests at 148 that state formation arose from an earlier practice of having tribal chiefdoms through competition, conquest or external pressure, the chiefdom being the most effective system of decision making to resist conquest or to outcompete other chiefdoms. Thus they were a human construct to deal with a divided and competitive scenario.
The Great Experiment, S Talbott, (Simon &Schuster, NY, 2008, 6).
Principal Representative of the Bahá'í International Community to the UN.
Dugal, “Is the nation state past its sell-by-date?”, (Perspectives, 2015)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/sovereignty
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 12, 1949.
https://www.idlehearts.com/2448182/the-concept-of-national-sovereignty-has-been-an-immutable-indeed-sacred-principle
The accuracy of this quote has not been verified.
For a discussion of cosmopolitanism and the Baha’i view see Nalinie Mooten, The Bahá’í Contribution to Cosmopolitan International Relations Theory, Online Journal of Bahá’í Studies 4 1 (2007) , 4-7.
Online at bahaiteachings.org, 2016.
Online at bahaiteachings.org, 2017.
The international law as to the right of outside intervention in the domestic affairs of a nation-state remains controversial.
Mankind and Mother Earth, (OUP, 1976, viii-ix)
first Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations in the University of Cambridge.
Nationalism and international society, (Cambridge UP, 1990, 145).
See the discussion in The New Nationalism, Louis L Snyder, (2003, Transaction Publishers, 357-358)
It has been suggested that state sovereignty can only mean absolute sovereignty. Such comments point to the difficulties of defining boundaries should a form of limited state sovereignty be proposed. But of course this is already an issue that has been addressed in framing federal national systems through the use of constitutional definition. That is not to say that it is an easy process to achieve, the greater difficulty being to obtain all state agreement.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall it seemed that the leaders of the nations might well engage in greater international collective action. Of this the Universal House of Justice recently observed that this has now been assailed by resurgent forces of racism, nationalism and factionalism – message of 18 January 2019.
In the Turning Point for all Nations, (prepared by Baha’i International Community, United Nations Office, N. Y., October, 1995), it is stated:
“Some fear that international political institutions inevitably evolve toward excessive centralization and constitute an unwarranted layer of bureaucracy. It needs to be explicitly and forcefully stated that any new structures for global governance must, as a matter of both principle and practicality, ensure that the responsibility for decision-making remains at appropriate levels.
Striking the right balance may not always be easy. On the one hand, genuine development and real progress can be achieved only by people themselves, acting individually and collectively, in response to the specific concerns and needs of their time and place. It can be argued that the decentralization of governance is the sine qua non of development. On the other hand, the international order clearly requires a degree of global direction and coordination.
Therefore, in accordance with the principles of decentralization outlined above, international institutions should be given the authority to act only on issues of international concern where states cannot act on their own or to intervene for the preservation of the rights of peoples and member states. All other matters should be relegated to national and local institutions.”
Volume VI (1934-1936).
Anglican Archdeacon from Ireland later Baha’i Hand of the Cause.
Turning Point for all Nations, op.cit.
The Promise of World Peace, (theUniversal House of Justice, 1995, para 53)
The World Order of Baha’u’llah, (Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1974, 202)
Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, (Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1976, 216)
The Turning Point for all Nations, op cit.
It has been said that: ““Conceived of as an end in itself, the national state has come to be a denial of the oneness of mankind, the source of general disruption opposed to the true interests of its peoples…” - A Bahá’í Declaration of Human Obligations and Rights”, (Bahá’í International Community,February, 1947). But in the writer’s opinion, the Baha’i approach to a reconstructed and more unified global community, in which a form of global governance exists alongside continuing nation-states, does not necessarily involve a denial of the oneness of humanity.
“Is the nation state past its sell-by-date?”, (Perspectives, 2015).
Turning Point for all Nations, op.cit.
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah, op.cit, 163.
Ultimately the Baha’i writings envisage that the term “sovereignty” attaches to the one supreme Deity of all, the “the sovereignty of God”.
”
The World Order of Baha’u’llah, op.cit. 42.
The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, Shoghi Effendi, (US Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1991).
“The Peace of Westphalia .. is the collective name for two peace treaties signed in October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster. They ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and brought peace to the Holy Roman Empire, closing a calamitous period of European history that killed approximately eight million people. Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, the kingdoms of France and Sweden, and their respective allies among the princes of the Holy Roman Empire, participated in the treaties….
Several scholars of international relations have identified the Peace of Westphalia as the origin of principles crucial to modern international relations, collectively known as Westphalian sovereignty. However, some historians have argued against this, suggesting that such views emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth century in relation to concerns about sovereignty during that time.”(Wikipedia)
Under the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, such a state must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). His famous work was the Leviathan.
Charter of the United Nations,Article 2.1.
Ibid, Articles 2.4 and 2.7 and Chapter VII. It has to be said that the United Nations, in combining the quest for world peace whilst largely retaining the concept of state sovereignty as the basis of world order, has to some extent at least failed in its most basic objectives, in that violent conflicts and the threats of same have still continued in the world since its formation.
Jared Diamond, in The World Until Yesterday, (Viking, 2012) suggests at 148 that state formation arose from an earlier practice of having tribal chiefdoms through competition, conquest or external pressure, the chiefdom being the most effective system of decision making to resist conquest or to outcompete other chiefdoms. Thus they were a human construct to deal with a divided and competitive scenario.
The Great Experiment, S Talbott, (Simon &Schuster, NY, 2008, 6).
Principal Representative of the Bahá'í International Community to the UN.
Dugal, “Is the nation state past its sell-by-date?”, (Perspectives, 2015)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/sovereignty
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 12, 1949.
https://www.idlehearts.com/2448182/the-concept-of-national-sovereignty-has-been-an-immutable-indeed-sacred-principle
The accuracy of this quote has not been verified.
For a discussion of cosmopolitanism and the Baha’i view see Nalinie Mooten, The Bahá’í Contribution to Cosmopolitan International Relations Theory, Online Journal of Bahá’í Studies 4 1 (2007) , 4-7.
Online at bahaiteachings.org, 2016.
Online at bahaiteachings.org, 2017.
The international law as to the right of outside intervention in the domestic affairs of a nation-state remains controversial.
Mankind and Mother Earth, (OUP, 1976, viii-ix)
first Sir Patrick Sheehy Professor of International Relations in the University of Cambridge.
Nationalism and international society, (Cambridge UP, 1990, 145).
See the discussion in The New Nationalism, Louis L Snyder, (2003, Transaction Publishers, 357-358)
It has been suggested that state sovereignty can only mean absolute sovereignty. Such comments point to the difficulties of defining boundaries should a form of limited state sovereignty be proposed. But of course this is already an issue that has been addressed in framing federal national systems through the use of constitutional definition. That is not to say that it is an easy process to achieve, the greater difficulty being to obtain all state agreement.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall it seemed that the leaders of the nations might well engage in greater international collective action. Of this the Universal House of Justice recently observed that this has now been assailed by resurgent forces of racism, nationalism and factionalism – message of 18 January 2019.
In the Turning Point for all Nations, (prepared by Baha’i International Community, United Nations Office, N. Y., October, 1995), it is stated:
“Some fear that international political institutions inevitably evolve toward excessive centralization and constitute an unwarranted layer of bureaucracy. It needs to be explicitly and forcefully stated that any new structures for global governance must, as a matter of both principle and practicality, ensure that the responsibility for decision-making remains at appropriate levels.
Striking the right balance may not always be easy. On the one hand, genuine development and real progress can be achieved only by people themselves, acting individually and collectively, in response to the specific concerns and needs of their time and place. It can be argued that the decentralization of governance is the sine qua non of development. On the other hand, the international order clearly requires a degree of global direction and coordination.
Therefore, in accordance with the principles of decentralization outlined above, international institutions should be given the authority to act only on issues of international concern where states cannot act on their own or to intervene for the preservation of the rights of peoples and member states. All other matters should be relegated to national and local institutions.”
Volume VI (1934-1936).
Anglican Archdeacon from Ireland later Baha’i Hand of the Cause.
Turning Point for all Nations, op.cit.
The Promise of World Peace, (theUniversal House of Justice, 1995, para 53)
The World Order of Baha’u’llah, (Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1974, 202)
Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, (Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1976, 216)
The Turning Point for all Nations, op cit.
It has been said that: ““Conceived of as an end in itself, the national state has come to be a denial of the oneness of mankind, the source of general disruption opposed to the true interests of its peoples…” - A Bahá’í Declaration of Human Obligations and Rights”, (Bahá’í International Community,February, 1947). But in the writer’s opinion, the Baha’i approach to a reconstructed and more unified global community, in which a form of global governance exists alongside continuing nation-states, does not necessarily involve a denial of the oneness of humanity.
“Is the nation state past its sell-by-date?”, (Perspectives, 2015).
Turning Point for all Nations, op.cit.
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah, op.cit, 163.
Ultimately the Baha’i writings envisage that the term “sovereignty” attaches to the one supreme Deity of all, the “the sovereignty of God”.
”
The World Order of Baha’u’llah, op.cit. 42.
Published
2025-09-16
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2025 IJO- International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ( E:ISSN 2811-2466 ) (P.ISSN: 2384-6097)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Author(s) and co-author(s) jointly and severally represent and warrant that the Article is original with the author(s) and does not infringe any copyright or violate any other right of any third parties and that the Article has not been published elsewhere. Author(s) agree to the terms that the IJO Journal will have the full right to remove the published article on any misconduct found in the published article.
