Essay requirement is 2000 words, it is based on the module: perspectives on politics. Should include a thesis statement and argument. Should include at least 8 academic sources. Notes on the topic: Political authority and political obligation:
Power and authority
- Power is the ability to influence, control behaviour of others – persuasion, manipulation, pressure, coercion, violence
- Authority is based upon a recognised right to rule others – people believe the ought to have a duty to obey rights/moral obligations
Political authority – to basic aspects:
- Willing compliance – the majority voluntarily obey the state from a sense of duty
- Compelled compliance (coercion) – those who don’t obey the state are subject to sanctions/punishment
- Political obligation – if state has legitimate authority, we have a political obligation (obey laws)
The modern state:
- Modern usage of term ‘state’ derives from machiavelli – terms state is derived from latin status
- Earlier state forms – the polis, empires, but the the modern state is very different in many ways (functions, organisation)
- There have been many societies with either no or few state structures – tribal societies, medieval period.
- The ‘state’ is to be distinguished from ‘ society’ – modern state as an institutional complex that seeks to impose order. (wider society)
Key characteristics:
- Interlocking set of organised/cohesive institutions enduring through time: Government/bureaucracy/military/courts
- Government is part of the state, yet a government can change whilst the state endures
The modern state:
- A compulsory political association :
- Incorporating a clearly defined territory, jurisdiction, population
- Enforcing collective decisions on all members of a society (law)
- Claiming sovereignty – possessing supreme power over all other groups, associations within its territory
- Monopoly over legitimate use of physical force within its territory
- State agencies (judiciary, police) Having the sole right to compel obedience to the law – contra vigilante justice
- State as the only political actor with legitimate right to declare war – all other forms of political violence deemed legitimate
- Provider of public goods and defender of common interest
- Public goods – security, tax
- Imposing burdens – taxation, employment law
- Regulating social behaviour – health, child rearing, interpersonal relationships
The problem of justifying state:
- Modern state is an institution with tremendous coercive power claiming the right to govern us in myriad ways
- This was not always a pressing question:
- Aristotle presumed that we are ‘political animals’
- Government considered ‘natural’ and the polis the culmination of human sociability
- There could be questions about the legitimacy of different systems of government, but not of government or the polis
- Modern era:
- Loss of belief in a natural political order (divine right of kings)
- Focus on the individual as a right-bearing being white rights and liberties are threatened by government
- Why should human that are free equal to all others, subject to the rule of those claiming political authority
The social contract tradition and Hobbes:
- There are various ways of to justify the state, but one the famous is the social contract tradition – Hobbes
- Basic ideas: Justify our basic political principles or arrangements (the state) by appealing to what rational, free, and equal persons would voluntarily agree or consent
- Hobbes’s context: Writing during the english civil war 1640s, his main concern was to offer a defence of political authority as a bulwark against social disorder and political chaos
- His approach:
- Imagine oneself in a situation, defined by total absence of law, rule and authority – hypothetical ‘state of nature’
- What wold be the consequences be of such a state of nature?
- What would we do, rationally to escape these consequences
Hobbes, state of nature:
- Hobbes assumptions about human being:
- Roughly equal in strength and intelligence
- Self-interested – reasonable desire to provide for their individual needs
- Overriding wish to preserve their own lives (the right of nature to do anything necessary for one preservation
- Consequence – unlimited conflict:
- Over resources – each trying to secure the most they can
- Over mistrust – fearing others, planning pre-emptive strikes
- Over glory – slights to ones reputation, honour
Hobbes, the social contract:
- State of nature:
- A perpetual barre of every man against his neighbour
- Hypothetical yet conceivable with empirical examples approaching it
- Central imperative – to secure peace so as to avoid death
- Entails:
- All equality and freely transferring or surrendering their individual right of nature/power to a sovereign – whether monarch, parliament, aristocracy
- Mutually covenanting promising to subsequently submit to the authority of that sovereign
- The sovereigns role – protection of all individuals, thereby binging the commonwealth into being and justifying limitations on our freedom
- Consent = state legitimacy = political obligations
Locke and limited government:
- The sovereign has absolute authority – undivided into (no separation of powers and unlimited (can judge on any issue)
- Absolute authority necessary to prevent factional disagreement and return to state of nature
- No rights to rebel – expect when the sovereign threatens your life
- Locke a fully liberal social contract theorist:
- The justification of government is the protection of life liberty, and estate
- The sovereign cannot be absolute – must respect these basic rights
- Hence limited government and a right to rebel – replacing tyrant with a different government (no-taxation without representation, American revolution)
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