Westphalian Sovereignty - Traditional View

Traditional View

Adherents to the concept of a Westphalian system refer to the Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 which ended the Thirty Years' War, in which the major European countries at the time (the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the Dutch Republic) agreed to respect the principle of territorial integrity. In the Westphalian system, the national interests and goals of states (and later nation-states) were widely assumed to go beyond those of any citizen or any ruler. States became the primary institutional agents in an interstate system of relations. The Peace of Westphalia is said to have ended attempts to impose supranational authority on European states. The "Westphalian" doctrine of states as independent agents was bolstered by the rise in 19th century thought of nationalism, under which legitimate states were assumed to correspond to nations—groups of people united by language and culture.

The Westphalian system reached its peak in the late 19th century. Although practical considerations still led powerful states to seek to influence the affairs of others, forcible intervention by one country in the domestic affairs of another was less frequent between 1850 and 1900 than in most previous and subsequent periods (Leurdijk 1986).

The Peace of Westphalia is important in modern international relations theory, and is often defined as the beginning of the international system with which the discipline deals.

International relations theorists have identified several key principles of the Peace of Westphalia, which explain the Peace's significance and its impact on the world today:

1. The principle of the sovereignty of states and the fundamental right of political self determination
2. The principle of legal equality between states
3. The principle of non-intervention of one state in the internal affairs of another state

These principles are shared by the "realist" international relations paradigm today, which explains why the system of states is referred to as "The Westphalian System".

Both the idea of Westphalian sovereignty and its applicability in practice have been questioned from the mid-20th century onwards from a variety of viewpoints. Much of the debate has turned on the ideas of internationalism and globalization which, in various interpretations, appear to conflict with Westphalian sovereignty.