Emergence of Modern

theory of Sovereignty.

KUMAR BHASKAR
1712
INTRODUCTION-
The modern state emerged from the feudal order. It emerged
at different places at different times.

Viewing medieval society from today’s perspective will give

us a haphazard picture of medieval state of realm. Rule by
kings, lords, bishops, priests and town oligarchies was a
competition for rights of jurisdiction over the lower orders.
The people didn’t really know who their ruler (or lawgiver)
was. The Church had a say in their marriages and also could
levy taxes, so could the land lords. The only thing in societies
like these which remotely resembled ancient or modern states
was monarchy. The only time the realm was a single unit was
in time of war or other emergencies. Society was a patchwork
of different forms of rule.

The modern state came out of the feudal order. we can trace
its progress from about 1500 to about 1800 in the works of
Machiavelli, Bodin, Hobbes and Adam Smith. Other thinkers
like Locke, Rousseau etc. played an important role in the
theoretical transformation of civil associations( and/or social
associations) to Enlightened despotism to Democratic
republic.

Machiavelli-
In Machiavelli’s writings there is no trace of the idea that the
political order is part of the god given order of things. State is
radically created by The Prince an artist who designs and
builds the state which he is to govern. There is to be none of
the local self-government which is a characteristic of feudal
societies. All decisions are to be the prince’s decisions. No
one is above the Prince hence it’s not feudal. Law for
Machiavelli is only one of the ways through which people
should be made to feel that they are being ruled. A prince in a
newly acquired state should also use force. When Machiavelli
speaks of law-giving, what he really means is not legislation,
where legislation means generally accepted laws according to
some generally recognised standard, but the whipping-in of a
lawless people. Machiavelli is modern because his political
thought speaks to a world which is no longer medieval and his
recognition that a particular kind of people, living at a
particular time and subject to particular circumstances, needs
a particular form of rule.

Princely government is being offered as the proper form of

government for Renaissance men who are particularly hard to
rule because men are notoriously fickle and at the same time
self-confident.

BODIN-
Bodin’s theory is very simply can be stated as-a well-ordered
state needs an absolute and legitimate sovereign centre. Bodin
considers himself an Aristotelian and thinks that factions
weaken states. Bodin took the theory of sovereignty out of
Divine Right theology and tied it to a view of what a political
community needed in its own best interest. Bodin decided that
the two central categories of political theorising were the
family and the state. He believed that the state’s authority
stops at the threshold of the household. In the public-realm the
sovereign is supreme and commands through law. language,
culture, religion and locally made law can create human bonds
making a community (CITE) but the state’s law must be
supreme over other potentially competing systems of law. The
institutions which do not complete with the sovereign should
be allowed to continue. (anti-feudal)

Bodin defines sovereignty as the ‘supreme power over

citizens and subjects, unrestrained by law’ unrestrained by
law because sovereignty is itself the source of supreme law.
Far from thinking that the king’s position was at the head of a
hierarchy whose justification was the hierarchy itself, Bodin
looked at the matter from the top down, and attempted to
show that all subordinate authorities derived from the supreme
sovereign.

HOBBES-
Hobbes provides the nascent theory of sovereignty with an
equivalent theory of man and of sociology (state of nature).
Human beings, for Hobbes, have only one aim self-
preservation and are guided by desire and aversion. They are
atomistic, ambitious and at the same time fearful.
The state of nature (pre-political association) is solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short. It’s a war of all against all.
Desire, Aversion and Rationality enables Man to come to a
social contract where they surrender all their freedom (except
right to self-preservation) to the Sovereign in return for safety.
The end of obedience to the Sovereign is social peace,
which makes it possible for men to pursue their own self-
chosen ends within a framework of law. Men are obedient to
sovereign because of fear of being punished. Hobbes’s theory
rests on the fundamental distinction between state and society.
For Hobbes Sovereign’s unimpeded writ and efficient
government are the same thing so only this can ensure the
sociability of these egotistical men.

ADAM SMITH-
For Smith important changes which occur in human life
happen first in society, where society means the economy and
the social structure, and only later affect the state. The priority
of society over the state is a sociological fact for Smith.
Commercial society is the most efficient society and hence
require a business type modern state to operate. Commercial
society has as its object the creation of wealth, and
commercial society is so successful at wealth creation that the
state had better stop trying to interfere with the serious
business of making money. There only duty is to sit back and
watch what problems are arising out of an increasingly
commercial society and decide whether it can efficiently cope
with it. Smith makes it commonplace to judge the government
whether it is failing the society or not.

FURTHER PROGRESS-
The history of the emergence of the theory of the modern state
is also the history of the state’s emerging claim to neutrality
i.e. equality before law and hence formal equality in
general.

Question arises about the instrumental view of state as

problem solver (smith’s theory) when the solution of a
problem requires nothing less than a radical change of society
i.e. if civil association is not enough we would need to
reorganize state on the basis of social association.
Civil association is association based on the rule of law,
where law regulates only men’s external relations with each
other. Each man is regarded as sovereign over his own
concerns (ends of life self-chosen), and the only duty he owes
to others is the legally conceived duty of obeying the law in
his dealings with them. Each man is regarded as sovereign
over his own concerns, and the only duty he owes to others is
the legally conceived duty of obeying the law in his dealings
with them because of the constant negotiations between them
to regulate the terms of their association. Civil association
need not be liberal (as evident in the theory of Hobbes) but a
liberal society is based on civil association as this could only
guarantee necessary economic individualism.

Social association is association for a common purpose which

can only be collectively achieved, and so it can only exist in a
society which is capable of acting with a single will to choose
the end or ends for which that society can be said to exist.
For-example ancient Greek city-states and Rousseau’s idea of
general will. Social association implies that we are all in the
same business, and that is the business of promoting human
happiness on the assumption that human happiness is not
worth having unless it is shared equally.

These collectivist ideologies have emerged throughout the

modern world as an alternative to liberal society or civil
associations.

To completely remove the remnants of feudal practices

engrained in the society for long one possibility was
Enlightened Despotism. Centralisation of the ruling function
in the monarchy, which effectively mean government by the
king’s chosen servants, provided the basis for it.
The Enlightened despot could easily reform a society whose
chief social problem was the existence of a feudal class
possessing privileges to which no corresponding duties were
attached. But there is always a possibility of this turning into a
tyranny or even simply its failure to end feudalism.

Conclusion-
Ideas emerging from Machiavelli’s writing simply made
Sovereign supreme, Bodin made a case for distinction
between the family (and other social institutions) and public
realm and was against divine rights theory. Hobbes is
ideologically complementary to Bodin because he provides
the sociological counterpart of Bodin’s theory. Smith
emphasized the superiority of society over state and an
instrumental view of state which doesn’t unnecessarily
interfere in private businesses.

But things do not happen as neat and demarcated on grounds

as they happen in political theory hence the world today is a
mixture of different kind of regimes but the most respect
worthy among them is democratic republic. The modern
democratic republic is a polity which is democratic in a
double sense. Not only people’s will is the basis of
its legitimacy, but it also have an effect on how the
government of that republic actually operates.