Freedom and the State

Political regimes

Classification of regimes

Democracy, Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism,

Modern democracy

Discussions: Can we claim that absolute freedom is possible and beneficial?

Reading: “Democracy”, Dictionary of the History of Ideas http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhiana.cgi?id=dv1-78

The nature of our obligation to our rulers became an important theme in the early study of politics. Why do we obey the state?

The easy answer to this question is that people obey out of habit. It does not occur to them to disobey. In modern times the question might be answered by anthropologists studying primitive societies, or by psychologists studying small groups of people and their response to leadership in laboratory situations. The ancient philosophers believed the answer lay in the nature of man. Outside society people could not attain true happiness. The real nature of man could only be realised by associating with others. He assumed that the good life lay in the polity and that legally constituted government was the natural form, so that corruptions of good government were aberrations. Hence harmony was more natural than conflict. Neither Plato nor Aristotle seems to have conceived that disagreement could be irreconcilable. Christian philosophers believed that authority came from God and, therefore, should be obeyed. Later dynastic rulers transformed this into the claim that hereditary rulers were appointed by divine law and so disobeying them was unthinkable…..

Rival Theories of State (Nature of State)

Lock and Hobbes were both political philosophers who theorized about the nature of humankind and the proper political systems that would meet the needs of humans as each saw them.

Both Locke and Hobbes based their work on a theory of the "state of nature" i.e. the natural condition of men before the creation of the state. But Hobbes was a proponent of a powerful sovereign, capable above all of maintaining order, while Locke was the great philosopher of the limited state constrained by respect for the rights of individuals.

Hobbes (1588-1679), writing in the period of the English Civil War and religious intolerance, therefore he took a rather dim view. He perceived man's nature as fearful in consequence of the struggle for survival. People battled against one another to achieve their ends. Hobbes wrote that the state of nature was a war of all against and in which life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”; resources were limited, and any single person is equally vulnerable to injury, death, or demise. Therefore the most efficient government is necessary to protect its citizenry. Hence a monarch with dictatorial powers- a sovereign was needed to enforce law and order. We obey the sovereign because if people start disobeying everyone will be miserable in a state of mutual conflict. It is not a moral obligation, it is a necessity. =the sovereign state, by ending this war, brought peace to mankind,  a goal so valuable it justified giving up all rights to the state, except if the state comes to kill me, in which case I retained an unlimited right to defend myself.

For Hobbes, relations between nations were still such a state of war of all against all.

Locke took a different view. Locke had a different view on human nature, milder view of the state of nature, and advocated a state limited by respect for individual rights.

From the late seventeenth century onward the question of the relationship between the individual and the state generally shifted from the obligation to obey to the circumstances in which one could disobey. Rather than each person being equally vulnerable to demise, each person, for Locke, was equally free and sovereign. And there is an abundance of resources (food, land) that one need only mix the labor with in order to own. Locke would want to form a democratic government because of the practical difficulty of each person being their own law enforcement, labor force, in short a government unto themselves.

It was argued by John Locke (1632-1704) that rulers rule with the consent of their people with whom they have a contract. If the ruler breaches their individual rights the people have a right to replace him. This justification of the English Revolution of 1688, when Parliament replaced a hereditary monarch it disapproved of, became an inspiration for the American Revolutionaries. Thus the study of political thought turned to constitutional liberalism and the need to control powerful government. Montesquieu (1689-1755) believed that this could only be done by separating the powers of the judiciary, legislature and executive from each other. Rousseau (1712-1778), with his belief in equality and sovereignty belonging to the people, challenged all previous ideas about authority.

(One has to note that Hobbes also wrote in a more dangerous era than Locke).

After the American and French Revolutions obedience was no longer either a habit or an accepted and expected pattern of behaviour.

=Locke exercised a profound influence on political philosophy, in particular on modern liberalism. Michael Zuckert has in fact argued that Locke launched liberalism by tempering Hobbesian absolutism and clearly separating the realms of Church and State. He His arguments concerning liberty and the social contract later influenced the written works of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. In fact, several passages from the Second Treatise are reproduced verbatim in the Declaration of Independence, most notably the reference to a "long train of abuses." Today, most contemporary libertarians claim Locke as an influence.

=The phrase "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" of American Declaration of Independence was Jefferson's version of Locke's 3 basic rights of "life, liberty, and property".

Political regimes

Government. To govern is to control.

1. Government (without the definite article) is an abstract term referring to the style, range, scope, purposes and degree of control. Such areas of academic discussion are sometimes also referred to as 'governance'. Broadly, there are two different philosophic approaches to government. One group of thinkers perceives it as a necessary instrument for maintaining order and reconciling conflicts in society. The other sees it as concerned with guiding humanity from lower forms of civilization to higher forms. Government is not just the tool of whoever is in power but a device for maintaining a moral order and/ or advancing to a better order. These two schools have been called the mechanistic and organic theories of government, though more frequently they are regarded as theories of the state.

2. 'The government' (with the definite article) usually refers to the rulers, that group of people who are in charge of the state at a particular time. Terminology is not universal even in the English speaking world. In the USA it is usual to call them the 'administration'. (Thus (in 1996) one would write of the Major Government in Britain and the Clinton Administration in America.)

An old-fashioned definition of government was in terms of a trinity EXECUTIVES, LEGISLATURES and JUDICIARIES. Legislatures made laws, executives implemented them and judiciaries ruled on them. All these were seen as methods of control and all were part of 'government'. They were also sometimes termed 'powers' and it was widely thought, by Montesquieu among others, that they should be quite separate.

Throughout the developed world, and even in much of the developing world, the scope of government has extended greatly. Today governments employ many more people and spend much more money than they did a century ago. The multi-functional modern state is elaborately complex.

Executives in the modern democratic state are today concerned with much more than the traditional function, that is to execute the laws. Governments are now a centre of power and leadership. Their many roles often far exceed those envisaged by those who drafted their constitutions. To govern today means more than to implement, or even to control. It consists of supervising, guiding, planning, coordinating, stabilising and many other activities.

-Rather than a government’s saying “my nation”, it’s important that a nation says “my government”

The characteristics of the people who rule, their behaviour in office and the methods by which they reach their positions, are paramount in any analysis of POLITICAL SYSTEMS

POLITICAL SYSTEMS (REGIMES)

Classifying the various forms of government has been one of the principal concerns of political analysis through ages. This process can be traced back to the 4’th century BCE, when Aristotle made the first recorded attempt to describe political regimes then in existence, using terms such as ‘democracy’, ‘oligarchy’ and ‘tyranny’.

From the 18’th century onwards, governments were increasingly described as monarchies or republics, or autocratic or constitutional regimes.

POLITICAL SYSTEMS (RIGIMES): democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian.