Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The Renaissance invented the idea of the state. The state, of course, manifests itself as an abstract idea in a way quite unlike the active presence of monarchs, councillors, and bureaucrats. An idea more powerful than any living person, the state evolved in the thinking of theorists from the early sixteenth century when Niccoloò Machiavelli used the word “state” to mean something akin to estate or status, and the middle seventeenth when Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf described the artificial person of the state as the true sovereign, an abstraction distinct from the natural person of the monarch or the corporate body of citizens or subjects. The power of the state rather than the power of the ruler became the true foundation of government, and rulers and subjects alike were obliged to be loyal to the state as the only legitimate source of law and coercive force. These theorists were struggling to gain analytical purchase on the elusive and volatile transformations, even revolutions, in government during their time.The invention of the idea of the state provided a new answer to an old question: What is government? In pondering the classical political texts, Machiavelli had offered two possible answers. The first depicted government as a principality – conceived as an extended household, managed by the ethic of the patriarchal family, an ethic embodied in the Roman law obligation ... log in or subscribe to read full text