Sovereignty: Concepts of Bodin and Hobbes
The Concept of Sovereignty
Popular sovereignty is a concept often debated. Today, the concept of sovereignty is sometimes seen as in crisis or inappropriate, especially when considering public international law and justified claims of universal human rights. International law, by its nature, seeks supranational universal validity.
The validity of international law can conflict with the recognition of state sovereignty. For example, a country might refuse to sign or complete a treaty because it clashes with its sovereignty. The idea of sovereignty also faces challenges from the tendency to decentralize central power. It’s important not to see sovereignty as a constraint but to understand its justification and how the concept can be respected. Key figures in this discussion are Bodin and Hobbes.
Bodin
In his Six Books of the Republic, written during the war in France between Protestants and Catholics, Bodin presents the sovereign as the entity that concentrates all decision-making power. Sovereignty, in this conception, represents political power in a single instance. The most characteristic aspect of this sovereignty is absolute power; the king is not bound by laws.
Bodin does acknowledge limits on this power:
- Natural law: The sovereign interprets and applies the principles of natural law.
- Intermediate powers: Legitimate powers exist alongside the sovereign.
- Contracts and property: The sovereign must honor and respect contracts and property.
- Civil society: The kingdom must protect its trading companies, showing a timid respect for civil society.
The idea of absolute power is not entirely separate from the idea of limits.
Hobbes
Hobbes’s view comes from mid-seventeenth-century England.
Hobbes’s social contract seeks to define the figure of the sovereign. He begins by studying a state of nature as opposed to a civil state. The Hobbesian state of nature is what remains when a society removes existing rules and institutions. For Hobbes, people in this state would use their own abilities to defend themselves and achieve their goals. Natural laws, in this state, are natural obligations. These laws help to find a solution to the state of nature, though success is not guaranteed. Hobbes seeks conditions for a pact between citizens to move from this state to a civil state: the unanimous resignation to use individual power and the transfer of that power to the sovereign, an authority created by the agreement itself, which is also absolute. The Hobbesian formulation does not favor either a monarch elected by citizens or a parliament, as there is no direct connection between citizens.
An absolute limit of the sovereign can be found in the very definition of the figure: the sovereign is above potential conflicts of interest in society. A logical consequence is that if the sovereign were to become part of the interests of individuals within the community, it would become a particular power within the community, ceasing to be sovereign and reverting to the state of nature.
Hobbes acknowledges and explores the possibility of parliament. Both Bodin and Hobbes recognize the existence of other instances, but this depends on the internal structure.