Two Aspects of Sovereignty: Internal and External

A country can be fully in charge of its own courts, police and Parliament, and still take its marching orders on foreign policy from a more powerful neighbour. Or the reverse: fully free on the world stage, but riddled with regions its own government cannot actually control. Sovereignty, in other words, faces two different directions at once — and this topic is about telling them apart.

In two minutes

Internal sovereignty is the State's supreme authority over everyone and everything within its own territory; external sovereignty is the State's independence from control by any other State — the two usually travel together, but a fact pattern can test either alone.

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