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Machiavellianism And Democracy
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He rejected the use of capital punishment. Religion is
important in the state and those that are not religious should not be
given leadership ranks. Thus he says, “but those who denied God’s
existence and providence, the immortality of the soul and sanctions in
the future would be deprived the capacity to hold public office and
accounted as less than men.â€[15] He associated morality with politics.
Another
theorist, Jean Bodin opines “the state is a secondary or derived
society, in the sense that it is a lawful government of several
households and of their common possessions with sovereign power; but it
is a different kind of societyâ€[16]. The natural social unit from which
the state arises is the family. Political order must be observed because
it is the supreme need of man. The supreme power of the state is vested
on the absolute sovereign. He has no right to disregard the divine
authority or the natural law. Thus “the sovereign is unrestrained by law
and he cannot limit his sovereignty by law, so long as he remains
sovereign, for law is the creation of the sovereignâ€[17]. The sovereign
is the supreme creator of the law and has ultimate and full control over
legislation.
It was in the renaissance period that Machiavelli
flourished. With his works, the Prince and the Discourses, he became the
first political theorist to present the state as a political structure
to be described on its own. In his political theory, “Machiavelli
deviates from the medieval teachings on the end of man by contending
that the end of man is solely earthly and not heavenlyâ€[18].For him
there is no divine law.
The modern period theorists also contributed
immensely to the development of politics. Thomas Hobbes holds that man
originally existed in “a condition of natural warfare-a state of homo
homini lupus, a condition in which man is a wolf to manâ€[19]. In the
state of nature there is no morality, no law, no right or wrong. People
then enter into bond or contract to establish peace and overcome the
condition of the survival of the fittest. The social contract or
commonwealth is the state where the people give up their right of
self-government and establish a ‘unity’. John Locke holds the same view.
The state of nature is the state of perfect freedom and equality. Men
enter into social contract in order to form a political society to avoid
the inconveniences that characterize the state of nature. Here through
labor one acquires private property. Thus “he hath mixed his labor with
(nature) and joined to it something that is his ownâ€[20].
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