LEGITIMACY OF TERRITORIAL AUTHORITY

Critically examine the claim by states to be the legitimate governing authority in a territory

Critically examine the claim by states to be the legitimate governing authority in a territory

Introduction

All the major countries claim their control over a territory. Whether the claim is true or false, is a matter of concern. In the past, Britain, France, Netherlands, and Portugal had claimed their control over various territories. After the dissolution of Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, most of the territories have claimed independence and have joined the United Nations. In this paper, the legitimacy of States' claims for governance over a piece of land i.e. territory is discussed. This paper basically presents a critical analysis of this debatable issue.

Discussion

According to an axiom of international law, every sovereign nation has the power - inherent in sovereignty and essential to its own integrity - to ban the entry of foreigners on its territory and / or its possessions, or admit them only in cases and conditions it deems appropriate (Green, 2006, 25). The justification of claim over a territory is marred by the lack of legitimacy. This is why; the long-standing issues of Palestine and Kashmir continue to undermine the suitability and legality of peace within these regions. These potential conflicts have led the parties to wars.

At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, there was an obsession with physical possession and control of territory, along with generally unchallenged assumptions about the benefits to be derived from that control. The nineteenth-century scholar of geopolitics Friedrich Ratzel developed the concept of the organic theory of the state, 'which treated states as competitive territorial entities vying with one another for control over parts of the earth's surface'. Control over physical territorial space is also vital for Sir Halford Mackinder, while for Captain A.T. Mahan, it was dominion of the seas that produced control of distant countries, the possession of colonies, and (dependent on these colonies) the potential for an increase of wealth. According to Mahan, even in instances where land forces were outnumbered, as was the case with the English forces in India during the eighteenth century, the mysterious power … was not in this or that man, king or statesman, but in that control of the sea which the French government knew forbade the hope of maintaining that distant dependency against the fleets of England (Morris, 2007, 58).

In addition, states claim they have a specific right to rule. It is not mere power that enables them to make law and to require their subjects to act in certain ways; they have a right to govern. That is, they have a right to make laws, to adjudicate disputes, to enforce their decisions, to institute programs of various kinds (e.g., education, transportation, public health). The right to rule is traditionally interpreted as an obligation on the people to obey the law. Trivially, one always has an obligation to obey the ...