5. It is to a French writer, Jean Bodin, that we must
turn for an analysis in terms of law of the political
experience which Machiavelli had considered in terms
of force alone. It was a matter of making good that
claim to independence of individual States which, as
we saw, marked the end of the medieval idea of the
respublica christiana. It was a matter also of defining
exactly the nature of the power which, within its terri-
torial boundaries, represented the cohesive element of
the State. Bodin's chief merit was to coin an appro-
priate name for that particular element which, from
the legal angle, was the distinctive attribute of the
modern State. Others before him—the Roman lawyers
particularly—had already noticed that what gives po-
litical power its special characteristic is the use of force
in the name, or on the basis, of law, i.e., of a binding
standard of regular procedure; and hence they had
proceeded to identify the ultimate location of that
power from which the law emanates, the summa
potestas “which legally commands and is not com-
manded by others.” Bodin called this power sover-
eignty, and with the help of this concept he set out
to unravel the nature of the State with a precision and
clarity that have left a lasting mark on subsequent
political theory.
Sovereignty is, according to Bodin, what distin-
guishes the State from any other kind of human associ-
ation. This means that it is neither size nor might that
counts on the international plane: a State remains a
State as long as it is sovereign. It also means, on the
internal plane, that social standing is irrelevant to the
impersonal bond of subjection that ties the citizen to
the sovereign. Sovereignty determines the structure of
the State: it may be exercised in different ways accord-
ing to the variety of governments, but it is basically
unitary and indivisible. Whether in the hands of one,
of a few, or of many, sovereignty remains qualitatively
the same, for it entails the monopoly of power—power
in the sense of control and creation of law—and not
only of factual supremacy and independence.
Thus was Bodin paving the way to the modern
conception of the State as the supreme arbiter of
human life—the conception which finds in Hobbes's
Leviathan (1651) its completest expression. Non est
potestas super terram quae comparetur ei (“There is
no power on earth that compares with him”): the words
from the Bible (Job 41:33, Vulgate version) with which
Hobbes inscribes his great work sum up most concisely
what was henceforth to be the claim of the State over
both individual and society. No doubt the model which
Hobbes provided was bound to be corrected and
modified in many ways, and even in part discarded,
in the course of the centuries. Hobbes taught, with
Bodin, that sovereignty could not be divided. But he
overlooked Bodin's important distinction between the
location and the exercise of power. Later political
theory, without abandoning the idea that sovereignty
is the exclusive possession of the State, emphasized the
different ways in which the power of the State can
manifest itself and be brought to bear upon its subjects,
and thus developed the doctrine of the division of
power which has become the mainstay of the modern
notion of the constitutional State. Hobbes further
conceived State-law as the only possible type of law,
and he was certainly right in maintaining that the
jurisdiction of the State is supreme within its own
boundaries. But his notion of law, framed after an
authoritative, voluntarist pattern, was unable to explain
the existence of other laws, not “positive” in the sense
in which the law of the State is positive, and yet, in
their own way, “valid.” Last, Hobbes believed that a
unified society—one where no groupings should be
allowed that might foster divided allegiances—was
necessary to the well-being of the State. Here too, his
prophecy has been belied by later events: the modern
State has successfully adapted itself to the existence
of a pluralistic society. And yet the fact remains that
sovereignty in Hobbesian terms is still the basic
attribute of the State to the present day: of the State
that combines supreme power at home with inde-
pendence abroad—the “national State,” under whose
banner the world has moved, for good or for evil,
during the last three centuries.
