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PO201: Week Seven Lecture & Reading: Locke on Territorial Rights
Lecture
The specific claims on the state:
States defend their territorial rights against:
a) Claims from outsiders who wish to invade (eg: colonialism)
b) Claims from insiders who wish to secede
An example of insiders aiming to secede is the Catalan Independence Movement.
Participants believe that Catalan has the right to self-independence from Spain, and is also
annoyed that it grants more economic benefits to Spain than it receives. The Spanish
government reacted terribly, imprisoning many leaders of the movement. Examples such as
this help to illustrate the following philosophical question:
The Territorial Question: When can a state justifiably claim political rights over a territory?
(These political rights include the rights to exercise political power over those within a
territory and its resources, and even to limit the flow of movement in/ out of the territory).
To answer this question, it is first important to understand the distinction between land and
territory.
Land: essentially any part of the Earth not covered in water
Territory: broader. Includes water, air space etc.
Advocates of the Consequentialist Answer claims that a state can justifiably claim political
rights over a territory so long as it governs justly. Whilst this view scorns colonialism (for
being unjust and exploitative) there are still objections. An Objection from Benevolence is
that if a state can justifiably claim political rights over a territory so long as it governs justly,
then perhaps colonialism can sometimes be justifiable if a colonial state rules justly eg:
British campaigns against lynching and slavery in the nineteenth century whilst still be a
colonial power. Ann Stilz states the concern as follows:
‘the view recognises no difference between being rules by a domestic government (as
long as it protects one’s human rights) and being ruled by a foreign government
(that does the same). But surely a subject people has an objection to being ruled by a
foreign government – While not subject to grave injustice, they are still denied self-
rule. The committed adherent of [The Consequentialist Answer] may dispute this,
arguing that benevolent colonialism is not wrong. But I believe most people will
agree that benevolent colonialism is problematic’.
Therefore, the Consequentialist Answer is lacking; does Locke provide the further
justification needed? Locke connects the creation of authority over persons and authority
over territory in this way in the Lockean Answer:
‘By the same Act therefore, whereby any one unite his Person, which was before free,
to any Commonwealth; by the same he unites his Possessions, which were before
, PO201: Week Seven Lecture & Reading: Locke on Territorial Rights
free, to it also; and they become, both of them, Person and Possession, subject to the
Government and Dominion of the Commonwealth, as long as it hath being’.
Therefore: Consensual political authority is necessary in solving the deficiencies of the State
of Nature to protect rights. In the State of Nature, natural property rights still existed even
without the protection of a state. Neighbours wouldn’t steal each other’s property; it would
be respected. This is the same regarding territorial rights. Therefore, the territorial rights of
the state are derived from individual property rights.
The Lockean answer holds that people claim property rights in territories, and following
their consensual transfer of rights to the state, the government then acts on their behalf in
exercising jurisdiction over a territory. However, the state cannot claim political rights over a
territory if its members lack property rights in the territory, of its members have not
consensually transferred the rights to act on their behalf to the state. Modern supporters of
this include A. J. Simmons who notes:
‘The Lockean view – condemns both the political subjection of the unwilling and the
exercise of territorial control by states over areas not legitimately employed in their
willing subjects’ lives’.
The Continuity Objection: This objection criticises Locke’s ideas and argues that if a state’s
political rights over a territory depend on individual’s property rights, then its territorial
rights might be patchwork, with holes in its authority existing where property-owners refuse
subjection to the state. In response to this, Simmons suggests that this problem is not that
serious, since few would refuse to subject themselves to the state or move to an exterior
space, given the disadvantage of being surrounded by a foreign state. In real life, there are
no ‘Lockean donuts’ where some landowners exist privately (because they don’t want to be
part of the commonwealth) and are not subject to the state’s rules.
The Permanence Objection: Once some territory is handed over to a state, and so falls
under its political authority, it can never be removed from the state’s jurisdiction. The issues
here is that initial contractors can then bind future generations to accept a state’s
jurisdiction by transferring their property to a state. In this way, the Lockean answer might
seem unduly to limit individuals’ rights to secede.
Cara Nine, a modern Lockean supporter, argues that states can come to deserve territorial
rights to land. But how plausible is to attribute such claims to states? A key critic of this is
David Miller in the Ambiguity Objection: this argues that there is some ambiguity in Nine’s
discussion about the relationship between state and people. Nine says, for example:
‘the state can be seen as (at least in part) the manifestation of the coordinated
efforts of individual members of the state. Much of the value of the lands occupied by
the members of the state is due to the coordinated efforts of those members’.
The ambiguity here is problematic because what we want to determine is whether
territorial rights belong primarily to states, or the people. It is hard to understand why the
state has rights over the labour and efforts of others. For example, if you’re arguing that
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