The state and authority: social contract, legitimacy and anarchism

Detail

1. The basic questions: why have a state, and why obey it?

• Political theory asks two linked questions:
• Why do we need a state at all?

• Why should a citizen obey its laws?

• Political obligation means a citizen's duty to obey the state. Each thinker below gives a different reason for it.

• Authority means power that people accept as rightful. Coercion means power used by force alone.
• The state's elements (population, territory, government, sovereignty) and its organs are covered in the state-government-governance note.

2. Social contract theory

• Social contract theory: the state's authority rests on an agreement among individuals. Through this agreement they leave the state of nature (the imagined condition of life before any government) and set up a political society.
• Hobbes (1588–1679), Locke (1632–1704) and Rousseau (1712–78) all said that the social contract is how organised society comes out of the state of nature [2].
• They differed on what the contract creates:
• Hobbes: one sovereign, set up through promises each individual makes.
• Locke: power shared among different organs of government, so that no single organ holds too much.
• Rousseau: all citizens joined into one all-powerful sovereign whose job is to express the general will [2].

Thinker and work	State of nature	Terms of the contract	Result for liberty
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)	A "war of all against all"; life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"	People give up almost all their rights to an absolute sovereign (the "Leviathan")	Security comes first. There is no right to rebel.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689)	People already have natural rights to life, liberty and property, but no fair judge to enforce them	People consent to a limited government that protects those rights	Government by consent. People keep a right of resistance if the government breaks the trust.
J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)	"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"	Each person gives themselves to the whole community. Popular sovereignty follows: the people as a whole are sovereign.	Law is legitimate only if it expresses the general will

Hobbes: security through an absolute sovereign

• Fear of violent death leads to the contract, which leads to a sovereign with unlimited power.
• Without a common power, everyone competes and no one is safe.

• The sovereign's power is not divided, because divided power brings back civil war.

• Freedom here is mainly freedom from fear. It is the root of the "order first" argument.

Locke: limited government and the right to resist

• Natural rights (rights a person has simply by being human, before any state exists): life, liberty and property.
• Government by consent: rulers hold power on trust from the people.
• Breach of trust gives a right of resistance:
• The government attacks the rights it was created to protect.
• The trust is broken.

• The people may resist and replace the government.

• This idea is echoed in the US Declaration of Independence (1776): "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"; governments get "their just powers from the consent of the governed".

• Locke and Hobbes cared mostly about stable government based on consent. Rousseau cared mostly about legitimacy through every citizen taking part in law-making, which makes his thought look more democratic [2].

Rousseau: the general will and popular sovereignty

• General will: what citizens want when they think of the common good. Rousseau saw it as a moral will that puts the community's interest first [3].
• Will of all: just the sum of private interests. It is not the same as the general will. (Exam trap.)
• Natural liberty becomes civil liberty:
• The person gives up natural liberty (doing whatever one likes).
• In return they get political or civil liberty (living under laws they helped make).

• All individual rights, property included, then come under the general will [3].

• "Forced to be free": a person who disobeys the general will may be made to obey it, and Rousseau says this makes them free.

• Isaiah Berlin later worried that positive liberty (freedom as self-mastery) can be twisted in this way to justify force "for your own good" (§6).

India: the Preamble as a social contract

• The Preamble opens with "We, the People of India". It closes with "do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution", dated 26 November 1949 in the Constituent Assembly.

• The people are both the authors and the subjects of the Constitution. That is the idea of a social contract.

• The same wording appeared in early drafts:

• The Union Constitution Committee's report used "We, the people of India, seeking to promote the common good, do hereby, through our chosen representatives, enact, adopt and give to ourselves this Constitution" [8].

• The Constitutional Adviser's Draft (October 1947) used the same words [7].

• A Socialist Party draft of 1948 also began "We, the people of India" and said the people acted "through our chosen representatives assembled in the Constituent Assembly" [9].

• The phrase "common good" in these drafts reflects Rousseau's general will.

3. Legitimacy: why power becomes authority

• Legitimacy: the belief that a ruler's power is rightful, so people obey willingly and not only out of fear.
• Weber's definition of the state ("Politics as a Vocation", 1919): the state is the community that successfully claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.
• Three key words: monopoly (no rival armed power), legitimate (accepted as rightful) and territory (fixed borders).

Weber's three types of authority

Type	What legitimacy rests on	Example
Traditional	Custom, precedent and inherited social norms [4]	Hereditary princes and kings
Charismatic	Faith in a leader's exceptional personal qualities. It rests on emotion, not reason. It is not bound by custom, rules or precedent, so the leader can claim unlimited power [5]	Gandhi's mass appeal
Legal-rational	Impersonal rules and offices. People obey the office, not the person [4]	Constitutional bureaucracy: impersonal and rule-bound, not based on personal connections [6]

• How authority changes over time: Weber saw a long shift from traditional to legal-rational legitimacy. He treated charismatic authority, such as that of a revolutionary leader, as short-lived [4].

• Charisma usually turns into routine. Example: after independence, the national movement's leadership was replaced by constitutional offices.

• Modern political systems rely mainly on legal-rational legitimacy [4]. In India, the Constitution, elections and a rule-bound civil service are its sources.

NCERT's view: democracy keeps rulers under control

• Class 11, Freedom (Sources of Constraints): some form of government may be unavoidable.
• But democratic government lets people keep control over their rulers, so it is the main way to protect freedom.
• This connects the three thinkers:
• Hobbes saw the need for a state.
• Locke stressed consent.
• Rousseau stressed the people's sovereignty.
• Democracy brings all three together.

4. Anarchism: the case against the state

• Anarchism: the view that the state is unnecessary and harmful. It should be replaced by voluntary cooperation among free individuals and communities.

Thinker	Key idea
P.-J. Proudhon	"Property is theft" (What is Property?, 1840). He was the first person to call himself an anarchist.
Mikhail Bakunin	Rejected both the state and authoritarian socialism, and argued for destroying state power
Peter Kropotkin	Mutual Aid (1902): cooperation, not competition, is a key force in nature and in society. So people do not need a coercive state.

Gandhi's "enlightened anarchy"

• Gandhi described an ideal of enlightened anarchy: each person is self-regulating, so no state is needed.
• He saw the state as a necessary evil. It rests on force, which goes against non-violence. It is needed only because people are not yet able to rule themselves.
• Ideal compared with practice:
• Ideal: a stateless society of self-ruling individuals (Swaraj, meaning self-rule over oneself).

• Practice: a highly decentralised order of village republics, since a complete absence of state is unlikely.

• Satyagraha: Gandhi's idea, from the early 20th century, of determined but non-violent resistance to evil. The word joins satya (truth) and agraha (persistence) [10].

• It is the Indian form of Locke's right of resistance, without violence.

• Critics at the time linked Gandhi's mass non-cooperation to disorder. Sir C. Sankaran Nair's book Gandhi and Anarchy (1922) attacked the Non-Cooperation Movement [11].

Three views of the state compared

View	Role of the state
Weber (state-centred)	The state is the only holder of legitimate force. Order depends on it.
Libertarianism (minimal state, §5)	The state should only protect life, liberty, property and contracts (a "night-watchman" state)
Anarchism	Remove the state completely and rely on voluntary cooperation
Gandhi	State is a necessary evil. The ideal is enlightened anarchy; in practice, decentralisation.

Prelims Hooks

• Leviathan is by Hobbes (1651). Two Treatises of Government is by Locke (1689). The Social Contract is by Rousseau (1762). Matching these is a common question.
• "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" is Hobbes. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" is Rousseau.
• Locke names the natural rights as life, liberty and property, and gives a right of resistance. The US Declaration of Independence (1776) echoes him.
• General will (aimed at the common good) is not the same as the will of all (the sum of private interests). Trap: they are not the same thing.
• "Forced to be free" comes from Rousseau. Berlin criticised positive liberty because of it.
• Weber, "Politics as a Vocation" (1919): the state holds a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a territory.
• Weber's types of authority: traditional (custom), charismatic (personal qualities; short-lived) and legal-rational (impersonal rules; bureaucracy).
• "Property is theft" is Proudhon (1840). Mutual Aid (1902) is Kropotkin.
• "Enlightened anarchy" and "state as a necessary evil" are Gandhi.
• The Preamble's "We, the People of India … adopt, enact and give to ourselves" shows that the Constitution's authority comes from the people. It reflects popular sovereignty and the social contract.

Mains Points

• Order or liberty: Hobbes puts security first and Locke puts rights first. India's Constitution tries to balance them. It grants fundamental rights but allows reasonable restrictions for public order and the security of the state. This is the Lockean idea of limited government with a Hobbesian concern for order.
• Legitimacy in Indian democracy: India moved from charismatic authority (Gandhi and the national movement) to legal-rational authority (the Constitution, elections, the civil service), as Weber predicted [4]. Answers can argue that a decline in trust in institutions weakens legitimacy, even when the state's power remains.
• The danger of the general will: claims that "the majority knows the common good" can justify suppressing dissenters ("forced to be free"). Constitutional rights, judicial review and protection for minorities guard against this. Link this to Berlin's warning about positive liberty.
• Gandhi's enlightened anarchy in practice: a stateless ideal turned into decentralisation (Panchayati Raj, village self-rule) and non-violent dissent (satyagraha [10]). It is a middle path between Weber's state-centred view and full anarchism. A good GS-II or Essay angle on participatory democracy.