POLITICAL THEORIES

Why do people voluntarily follow and obey their rulers? Why do people accept and maintain authorities and institutions? In authoritarian regimes people obey involuntarily, by fear. But, as Xenophon already knew, the power of tyrants is not based uniquely on material force and constraints. Plato’s idea of justice bears on the problem of legitimacy, as […]

Theories of human nature attempt to identify and explain the fundamental features of the human species; and many theorists go on to offer prescriptions as to how human life ought to be conducted, both at the level of individual behaviour, and the level of social and political policy. In asking how far human nature can

In thinking about justice, and about morality more generally, the traditions of Aristotle and Locke have had a powerful influence. Both have been adapted to contemporary life in constitutional democracies. Locke is indeed a severe individualist, while Aristotle stresses the social nature of the human animal: how an individual is, in her/his very identity, in

Law can be described in short as an ordering and regulation of human behaviour. Two kinds of dispute about law have been involved: first as to its source, and second as to its elements and structure. This, in brief, was the view adopted by ‘legal positivists’. Legal philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham and

The concept of power is at the heart of political enquiry. Indeed, it is probably the central concept of both descriptive and normative analysis. It would seem impossible to engage in political discourse without raising, whether implicitly or explicitly, questions about the distribution of power in society. Indeed, it is a striking fact that while

The state is one of the most difficult concepts in politics. One of the most intractable problems in such debates is that there is little agreement on what is being studied. These and many other questions plague the study of the state. The word state derives from the Latin stare (to stand) and status (a