A QUENTIN SKINNER APPROACH TO LIBERTY 2

For Skinner the genealogy of the state concept is not a matter of choice but necessity, as no single, agreed-upon definition exists. Political science’s attempts to provide neutral definitions inevitably risk ideological bias. Genealogy reveals that the concept of the state has no fixed essence or natural boundaries; instead, it has been continually contested and reshaped. Historically, the term "state" emerged around the late 16th and early 17th centuries, originally referring to a civil association under the sovereign authority of a ruling group, typically a monarch regarded as the head of state. Early uses included interchangeable terms such as "realm" or "nation," but the concept of the state eventually prevailed, partly through semantic shifts in Renaissance political advice literature. For example, the phrase "maintain your state" in Machiavelli’s writings ambiguously referred both to preserving a ruler’s position and the well-being of the body politic. This early modern understanding developed along two main absolutist strands: one centred on sovereignty as unified in a monarch who is the head of the state, and the other on divine right theory, as exemplified by King James I’s claim of God-given supreme authority over the state’s body. This absolutist view sees the state metaphorically as a body with a sovereign head. 

However, soon after, a rival populist conception arose, rejecting the head-body metaphor and arguing that sovereignty resides not in the ruler as head but in the body of the people itself. This populist view gained traction especially in republican contexts like Renaissance Florence and Venice, with Machiavelli as a key proponent advocating self-governing republics. Thus, genealogy reveals the state as a concept continuously shaped by competing understandings—between absolutist rule and popular sovereignty, highlighting the possibility of reimagining the state beyond its contemporary usage as a mere synonym for government. 

Republics are called “free states” to distinguish them from monarchies—where true freedom is only possible if one lives in a state that is itself free. This pun highlights that a free person can only exist within a free state. In contrast to the absolutist model of monarchy, the aftermath of Europe’s religious wars, especially in France and later in England, brought a new challenge: resisting the forcible imposition of a single religion. 

This political crisis gave rise to contractarianism, a tradition that claims sovereign power originates from the people themselves. Governments are seen as delegates of this power, and if they abuse it, the people have the right to revoke it. This radical contractarian idea culminates in John Locke’s theory, where tyranny is defined as the violation of the people’s original sovereign authority. A foundational text in this tradition is Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579), written in the context of the French religious wars and influential on English republican thought. Its ideas underpinned the Parliamentarian justification for executing Charles I and abolishing monarchy in 1649. John Milton, poet and secretary to Oliver Cromwell, was a key proponent of this vision. In The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, published shortly after Charles’s execution, Milton argues that kings and magistrates are tenants, not freeholders; the people are the true freeholders of sovereign power. He insists that the body of the people is the state and retains the right to depose rulers who act against the law and the common good. 

However, this radical populist theory, after briefly triumphing, was soon attacked from two directions. Some, like Sir Robert Filmer, revived the old divine right theory of monarchy. But more significantly, thinkers like Thomas Hobbes rejected both absolutism and populism, formulating an alternative theory of the state that would become deeply influential in modern political philosophy. 

Hobbes wrote Leviathan in reaction to the English Civil War and the execution of Charles I, aiming to dismantle both populist and divine right theories of the state. He begins by attacking the populist idea that the state originates from a pre-existing society of sovereign individuals. Hobbes insists that in the natural condition there is no society, only isolated, self-interested individuals in a state of war, an antisocial, asocial state of nature. Therefore, the notion of an original “body of the people” holding sovereignty is a fiction. He also rejects the divine right theory, claiming that political authority isn’t God-given but entirely artificial and man-made. Hobbes instead proposes that sovereigns are simply authorized representatives. A sovereign doesn’t rule by divine right or by having some mystical link to the people but by being authorized by individuals to act in their name. Hobbes’s key innovation is the idea of representation not as metaphorical but legal: when we authorize someone, their actions are attributable to us, they become our will. 

However, Hobbes confronts the puzzle: if the sovereign is a representative, who or what is being represented? He says it cannot be a multitude because a multitude has many wills. To resolve this, Hobbes introduces the idea of the political covenant. This covenant isn’t between the people and a ruler, but between individuals with each other: they agree mutually to authorize a sovereign, whether an individual, a group, or even themselves collectively (in which case you have a democracy). By this act of mutual covenanting, the multitude is transformed into a single unified person: the person of the state. Hobbes says “a multitude of men are made one person when they are by one person represented.” The sovereign thus represents the persona civitatis, the person of the state, which is a fictional person but a necessary legal fiction. The state is not a real individual but is treated as a single will and person for the sake of lawful political order. Sovereignty thus resides in this artificial unity, and the sovereign, though absolute, is merely its authorized representative. 

In Hobbes's political theory, the state is a distinct entity, a "person", that is separate from both the sovereign and the people. The sovereign, though often conflated with the state, is merely its representative. Likewise, the unity of the people is unstable and constantly changing, while the state is imagined as a stable, continuous "artificial person" with an "artificial eternity." This person of the state has duties and a will that are distinct from those of any individual. 

Hobbes’s theory is thus more complex than the medieval “two bodies” theory of the king; it involves three bodies: the sovereign’s natural body, the sovereign’s artificial or representative body, and the fictional person of the state itself. The legitimacy of government, in Hobbes's view, depends on the sovereign acting for the common good, what he calls the "commodity" of the people. This fictional theory of the state was picked up and expanded in European public law by thinkers such as Samuel Pufendorf and Emer de Vattel. Both argued that the state is a moral person with its own understanding and will, requiring representation through sovereign authority whose duty is to secure the common good. This view entered English common law via Blackstone's Commentaries, which helped transmit it to American constitutional thought. 

However, toward the end of the 18th century, the fictional theory came under sharp attack, especially from Jeremy Bentham and the utilitarians. Bentham dismissed the idea of the state as a "fiction" and called instead for legal reasoning based on real, observable individuals and their experiences of pleasure and pain. For Bentham, the notion of the state as a person was not just wrong but meaningless. His critique marked the beginning of a broader utilitarian rejection of legal fictions, which had a lasting influence on English and American jurisprudence. Early utilitarians avoided theorizing about the state altogether, with the exception of John Austin, who acknowledged the term only to reduce it to the bearer of sovereign power, equating state and government as mere synonyms, thus rejecting any metaphysical or fictional conception of the state. 

After the peak of utilitarian legal philosophy in mid-19th-century England, there was a notable shift at the end of the century with the rise of Hegelian, not Marxist but Hegelian, theories of the state in anglophone political philosophy. This shift reintroduced Hobbes’ theory of the state, originally conceived as a fictional person, but now reinterpreted through a Hegelian lens as the state being a real person with its own rational will, distinct from the sovereign and the people. This meant that obeying the state was equated with obeying one’s own true will, which had ominous implications, especially as German thinkers like Carl Schmitt later used this idea to defend Nazism. 

However, in anglophone discourse, this Hegelian theory of the state was widely rejected as both nonsensical and sinister, especially after World War I, when thinkers like Hobhouse satirized it and emphasized the state as simply the apparatus of government rather than a real person. Similarly, Harold Laski defined the state in purely operational terms as a system of sovereign authority, bureaucracy, and coercive force within a territory, reflecting Weber’s influential definition. By the early 20th century, while states were still assumed sovereign, the concept of sovereignty itself began to be seriously questioned. 

Traditionally, sovereignty meant the state’s absolute power to command without being commanded within its territory, a concept inherited from Bodin and Hobbes. But after World War I, with institutions like the League of Nations and the International Court of Justice established, the absolute sovereignty of states was challenged by supranational legal authorities capable of overriding state decisions. In the 1920s and 1930s, political theorists increasingly separated the idea of the state from sovereignty, arguing that states still existed but were no longer truly sovereign. For example, A.D. Lindsay argued that the old doctrine of the independent sovereign state was outdated and called for a political theory focused on the international arena and world governance. By the late 20th century, the idea of sovereign states as the ultimate political units was widely discredited in political and international relations theory. 

Several factors contributed to this decline, most notably the rise of multinational corporations and international institutions that could influence or coerce local states, particularly in the developing world, by controlling investment and demanding favorable conditions. These corporations could pressure states to alter laws and policies under threat of withdrawing capital, thereby undermining state sovereignty. Consequently, sovereignty as an absolute, independent political authority has effectively eroded in the face of global economic and legal forces. The development of an overarching ideal of human rights has played a significant role in the growth of international legal organizations, though the United States has resisted joining conventions like the International Convention on Human Rights because it supersedes national legal jurisdictions. This convention forbids discrimination based on sex, age, religion, and includes protections such as minimum wages, which are part of international jurisprudence. This challenges the traditional notion of sovereign states, suggesting that states are shrinking in power and influence, leading some theorists such as Foucault to argue that the concept of the state is becoming obsolete. 

However, this claim is premature. Leading states remain central actors on the international stage and within their own territories, especially in developed countries. States continue to enforce laws, maintain surveillance, intervene economically, and even act as lenders of last resort during crises, such as the 2008 financial crash. They print money, impose taxes, wage wars, and legislate complex legal systems. These functions show that the state very much exists and exercises significant power. The problem arises from equating the state simply with government. There are multiple ways to conceptualize the state, including absolutist, populist, and fictional views. The fictional theory, recently gaining renewed attention among legal and political philosophers, argues that the state should be understood as a fictional person with an artificial, enduring existence. 

This perspective helps make sense of concepts like sovereign debt, which cannot logically be attributed to a transient government or the people, since governments change and the people do not contract the debt directly. Instead, the debt belongs to the state as a continuous legal entity that outlives any one government or generation. Importantly, the fictional theory separates the state from government to provide a basis for judging the legitimacy of government actions. The state, as a union of people with common interests, is a useful legal and political fiction to assess whether government actions serve the collective good. 

This understanding is a powerful tool for democratic legitimacy and political reflection, and it is unclear to Skinner why it was ever dismissed.