The normative loop at the heart of sovereignty: Public authority, legitimacy and the common good

The concept of sovereignty is often confined to power-centric, state-bound aspects of politics, leaving its normative dimension under-theorised. This article argues that sovereignty cannot be treated as a normatively inert notion, nor reduced to the nation-state. It offers a revised, historically grounded account of sovereignty as containing an abstract normative ideal of political authority oriented toward the common good and irreducible to empirical claims, national borders, or fixed institutional forms. The article conceptualises sovereignty’s normative dimension through the notion of the “normative loop,” which captures the interconnection among sovereign power, the public realm, and the common good. It then elaborates four desiderata that an account of the common good must satisfy to function within this framework. Finally, the article explores the framework’s implications for political legitimacy and autonomy. The upshot is that the value of external autonomy hinges on internal legitimacy, which in turn is grounded in a fiduciary duty to the common good. This provides an alternative to both sovereigntist nostalgia and realist, power-centric, state-bound accounts of sovereignty.