The Sovereignless State and Locke's Language of Obligation

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
Liberal Thought

Modern liberal states are founded on individual rights and popular sovereignty. These doctrines are conceptually and historically intertwined but are in theoretical and practical tension. Locke's political theory is a source for proponents of both doctrines, and the same tension that runs through modern liberal thought and practice can be found in his theory. Rather than define the state in terms of a single sovereign authority, Locke constructs a sovereignless commonwealth with several coexisting claimants to supreme authority. He rejects sovereignty as what unifies the state, and he wants to replace the discourse of sovereignty theory with a language of obligation that will help bind together the sovereignless state. This language permits its adherents to articulate the reasonable basis and limits of political power. An understanding of Locke's sovereignless state helps us better comprehend the tensions embodied in discourses about individual natural rights, popular sovereignty, and governmental authority heard in the liberal state.

Reconstructing Sovereignty: A Human Rights Perspective

1997 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Mills
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
International Community ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sovereign Authority ◽  
The Relationship

The balance between traditional conceptions of sovereignty and human rights is changing. This article argues that developments in the area of human rights and humanitarian assistance are forcing a reconceptualisation of the rights and duties inherent in claims to sovereign authority. Further, from a normative political theory perspective, this article maintains that by investigating the social purpose of the State, we can identify’ three essential building blocks of sovereignty – human rights, popular sovereignty, and self-determination. In addition, this same analysis leads to the conclusion that the international community has not only a right but a duty to ensure that human rights are protected. In other words, a reconceptualisation of the relationship between individuals, groups, the State, and the international community is put forth which is more ambiguous than traditional formulations.

Not In Their Name

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Lawford-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The State ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Collective Agent ◽  
Social Metaphysics ◽  
Ordinary Citizens

Given their size and influence, states are able to inflict harm far beyond the reach of a single individual. But there is a great deal of unclarity about exactly who is implicated in that kind of harm, and how we should think about both culpability and responsibility for it. The idea of popular sovereignty is dominant in classical political theory. It is a commonplace assumption that democratic publics both authorize and have control over what their states do; that their states act in their name and on their behalf. Not In Their Name approaches these assumptions from the perspective of social metaphysics, asking whether the state is a collective agent, and whether ordinary citizens are members of that agent. If it is, and they are, there is a clear case for democratic collective culpability. The book explores alternative conceptions of the state and of membership in the state; alternative conceptions of collective agency applied to the state; the normative implications of membership in the state; and both culpability (from the inside) and responsibility (from the outside) for what the state does. Ultimately, Not In Their Name argues for the exculpation of ordinary citizens and the inculpation of those working in public services, and defends a particular distribution of culpability from government to its members.

scholarly journals Macintyre on identity of ethics and politics

2006 ◽  
pp. 29-56
Author(s):  
Michal Sládecek
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Ethics And Politics

In first chapters of this article MacIntyre?s view of ethics is analyzed, together with his critics of liberalism as philosophical and political theory, as well as dominant ideological conception. In last chapters MacIntyre?s view of the relation between politics and ethics is considered, along with the critical review of his theoretical positions. Macintyre?s conception is regarded on the one hand as very broad, because the entire morality is identified with ethical life, while on the other hand it is regarded as too narrow since it excludes certain essential aspects of deliberation which refers to the sphere of individual rights, the relations between communities, as well as distribution of goods within the state.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

scholarly journals Mary Wollstonecraft's Political Political Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Frazer
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Political Judgment ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Civil And Political Rights

AbstractThis paper separates Wollstonecraft's critical concept of “machiavelian” power and the capacity for domination, from a neutral concept of politics as the complex processes surrounding the power to govern, from her normative account of popular sovereignty which emphasizes collective political power to ensure the discharge of natural duty by way of civil and political rights and duties. Wollstonecraft's voice as political judge—which is audible throughout her work, but particularly clearly in her book on the French Revolution—articulates the ways that political power can be abused and misused, and can also be effective. Her theory is political in several ways: she interrogates the nature of political power and its explanatory importance; she consistently articulates political judgment about matters both conventionally political and social; she offers a theoretical justification for the expansion of the scope of politics to cover relations that hitherto were thought to be outside its domain; and finally her work itself constitutes a political intervention.

scholarly journals From Progressive Radicalism to Democratic Degeneration: The Trajectory of John Locke's Political Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-29
Author(s):  
Sirvan Karimi
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
John Locke ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Fundamental Function ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Organic Intellectual

As an organic intellectual of the emerging propertied class in 17th century England, John Locke has made an enduring contribution to the prevailing ideas shaping the socio-political order in Western societies and beyond. Through invoking the law of nature and natural rights which were nothing more than what he had abstracted from the socio-economic conditions of the seventeenth century and had projected back into the state of nature, Locke assiduously embarked on justifying the separation of civil society from the state, naturalizing  class inequalities identifying the preservation of property as the fundamental function of the state, and rationalizing the subordination of  propertyless classes to the emerging  liberal democratic political order geared to preserve the interests of economically hegemonic classes.

Liberalism, Democracy, and Development: Philosophical Dilemmas in Third World Politics

1982 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Third World ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Democratic Equality

In Western societies, the democratic franchise came after the liberal state was firmly established. In Third World countries, the imposition of liberal democracy may generate contradictions between the market and traditional sectors of the polity. Furthermore, liberalism favours restrictive authority in order to safeguard individual rights against the state. In Third World contexts, the more urgent need may be for an interventionist state that will create conditions of minimum democratic equality for all. A government subject to constitutional checks and judicial review may cut across the developmental requirement of permissive authority. These abstract issues of political philosophy can be profitably discussed with respect to recent controversies in India.

scholarly journals Liberal and conservative political thought in nineteenth-century Serbia Vladimir Jovanovic and Slobodan Jovanovic

Balcanica ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 131-153
Author(s):  
Boris Milosavljevic
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Scene

Two very influential political philosophers and politicians, Vladimir Jovanovic and Slobodan Jovanovic, differed considerably in political theory. The father, Vladimir, offered an Enlightenment-inspired rationalist critique of the traditional values underpinning his upbringing. The son, Slobodan, having had a non-traditional, liberal upbringing, gradually-through analyzing and criticizing the epoch?s prevail?ing ideas, scientism, positivism and materialism-came up with his own synthesis of traditional and liberal, state and liberty, general and individual. Unlike Vladimir Jovanovic, who advocated popular sovereignty, central to the political thought of his son Slobodan was the concept of the state. On the other hand, Slobodan shared his father?s conviction that a bicameral system was a prerequisite for the protection of individual liberties and for good governance. Political views based on different political philosophies decisively influenced different understandings of parliamentarianism in nineteenth-century Serbia, which in turn had a direct impact on the domestic political scene and the manner of government.

scholarly journals CИЁСИЙ ИНТЕРНЕТ-КОММУНИКАЦИЯ –– ИЖТИМОИЙ РИВОЖЛАНИШ ОМИЛИ СИФАТИДА

2019 ◽  
pp. 158-163
Author(s):  
Hilola Abdurakhmonova
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Information Society ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
State And Society

Замонавий шароитда сиёсий коммуникацияни тадқиқ этишнинг умумназарий ва методологик жиҳатлари ахборотлаштиришда ижтимоий омиллар таҳлили, ўтмиш олимларининг сиёсий назариянинг умумий муаммоларига бағишланган асарлари, давлат ва жамиятнинг ўзаро муносабатлари, сиёсий ҳокимиятнинг моҳияти ва механизмлари кўриб чиқилган. В статье рассматриваются общетеоретические и методологические стороны политической коммуникации в контексте современных социально-политических аспектов коммуникации, дается анализ социальных факторов формирования информационного общества, а также рассматриваются общие проблемы политической теории различных ученых, взаимодействие государства и общества, сущность и механизмы политической власти. This article discusses various aspects of political communication, the context of modern social and political aspects of political communication, the analysis of social factors in the formation of information society, the general problems of the political theory of the past, the interaction of the state and society, the essence and mechanisms of political power.

scholarly journals Thomas Hobbes: Liberal illiberal

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Legal Authority

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) has often been regarded as a very illiberal thinker —a defender of ‘despotism’ and an advocate of the principle that ‘might is right’. While those accusations are false, it is true that there are distinctly illiberal elements in his thinking. These include absolutism, authoritarianism, anti-constitutionalism and a hostility to democracy. Yet his political theory also contains some of the most important building-blocks of modern liberal thinking about the state and its citizens: the crucial role of consent; natural rights; egalitarianism; the idea of the state as a device to protect people against oppressors; the homogeneity of legal authority within the state; the concept of the state as a public realm; and the idea that the sovereign acts publicly—above all, through law. (These last three points are preconditions of a Rechtsstaat.) And whilst Hobbes denies that people are ruled by a constitution, his theory does acknowledge the need for rule through a constitution.

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