Society, State, and Power: Understanding Political Structures
Society and State from Nature
Source Definitions:
- Causes or reasons why humans are naturally determined to live in communities.
- The purpose that is pursued within the constitution of a determined community.
State of Nature
A socio-political concept or category used to make intelligible the origin of society and its meaning or purpose. The origin of society lies in a destitute human being and the satisfaction of their needs.
Power
A multiplicity of force relations that are immanent, exercised in their own domain, and constitute its organization. It is the name given to a complex strategic situation in a given society.
Power of the State
The state is a relation of domination of man over man, founded on legitimate violence. Sovereignty is an essential feature of the state, meaning that the power of the state is unique and supreme within its territory and is independent in its international relations.
Bellicose Interpretation of Power and Politics
Strategy is an attitude, situation, or confrontation that behaves in a certain way. The expression “man is a wolf to man” exemplifies this.
Power is Not the Same as Force and Violence
A community cannot be organized by force and violence. Humans would not be free and equal on that basis.
Power
Power is power over other men. Power suppresses and dominates force. Power is intersubjective, mediated by speech and language, and aimed at achieving a rational understanding of an agreement or contract. Power is the power of creation and construction.
Legitimate-Legal
Policy: The conformity of something to legally promulgated rules provides a regulatory framework for a determined area of social and political life.
Legitimacy: The justification for being of a legal order instituted according to free, rational, and intersubjective agreement, guided by ethical criteria of justice.
Something is legal when it is adjusted according to some law, to certain requirements set by that body of laws.
Division of Powers
- Legislative: The ability to develop and enact laws.
- Executive: The ability to govern and run political action.
- Judiciary: The ability to judge and settle on the breaking of laws.
Right
The set of rules governing intersubjective relations, the transgression of which involves the performance of enforceable powers.
Character of Legal Rules
- Mandatory and prescriptive.
- Standards set by the state.
- Compliance is secured and backed by the state.
- General rules imposed by the authorities.
For the Right
- The establishment of social peace.
- Equal relations regulation.
- Security of citizens.
- Protection and guarantee of the fundamental rights of human beings.
- Realization of freedom and justice.
Rule of Law
State: A specific territory, a legal order, and the sole holder of a legitimate and legally regulated force.
Requirements of the Rule of Law
- Rule of law.
- Separation of powers.
- Legalization of the administration.
- Fundamental rights and freedoms.
Forms of the Rule of Law
- Liberal state of law: Development of liberal rights (right to life, freedom of thought, etc.).
- Social state of law: Develops social rights (right to work, housing, balance, education, etc.).
- Democratic state of law: Develops the democratic rights of political participation and the power of civil society interventions.
Theories and Forms of Contract
Contract as Submission: Hobbes
The source of the state can be called a contract of submission, the submission of individuals to the absolute power of the state.
Main Points:
- Passion and desire, craving and aversion characterize human nature. Self-preservation instinct and power as a means of meeting needs and passions move men. Then there is the war of all against all.
- This is the state of nature because man is a wolf to man. As the natural precept of agreement and understanding between people is not guaranteed or met, a higher power is necessary to enforce it because, without the sword, covenants are but words.
- Characteristics:
- Each individual delivers and alienates their power.
- The choice of one to represent all.
- Recognition that one is powerless to ensure common peace.
- The sovereign and state, the Leviathan or mortal god, have absolute power.
- In relation to the sovereign and the power exercised, the remaining men are only subjects. In an absolute state like Hobbes’, there are no citizens.
Liberal Contract: Locke
- Locke believes, unlike Hobbes and Rousseau, that man is social by nature.
- In the state of nature, man lives in complete freedom and equality. In this state, man has a number of rights: right of security, of property, etc.
- One claims there must be a state to preserve the life and property of its members. The main purpose for which men seek to meet in communities is to safeguard their property.
- The contract is not a pact of alienation of rights or subjection to absolute power. It is a liberal state.
Social Contract: Rousseau
Criticizes previous theories:
- The contract of submission denies natural human freedom and makes no political freedoms.
- Locke: Natural man does not have the right to freedom.
Types of Contracts:
- Contract for disposal: An individual disposes of their freedom, becoming a slave, in exchange for their life or some security.
- Social contract: The genuine character of this social contract is within the meaning of submission to the law on freedom. Thus, men move from a natural state and need to a state based on reason and the fruit of freedom. All human beings are in the same situation, establishing a just, political, and legitimate social order. It constitutes a community, becoming citizens with rights and duties.
Democracy
Democracy establishes an essential relationship between power and good. It comes from Latin and means “people’s government”. It is the opposite of autocracy, which is the government of the few. A political system, then, is democratic when collective decisions about important issues that reach the community are taken by all members of that community.
Rules of Democracy
- Effective participation of all citizens = universal suffrage.
- Recognition of political pluralism.
- Principle of the majority.
- Right of the minority to influence the majority’s will.
- Commitment to conflict resolution, agreed upon between majority and minority.
- Formation of public opinion.
- Separation of powers within the state.
- Effective control over the management of government.
Forms of Democracy
- Direct democracy: All citizens, gathered in assembly, use the powers and functions of state and government.
- Representative democracy: The will of the electorate is represented by Parliament and other representative bodies.