SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Leviathan, Elite, Pierre Trudeau
5 Nov 2018
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Document Summary
The presence of a state is usually taken as a given. The government is an institution that organizes and runs the behaviour of the state. It is represented by a centralized government. It maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. It has jurisdiction within a certain territory. Monopoly: no such thing as multiple states. Territory: states" reach is almost exclusively geographic. Government: omits social organization without formal government institution. Idea that some time in (imagined or real) the past, humans lived without a state without a state. Interpersonal violence is the only resolution to conflict. Continual fear and danger of violent death and the life of man, solidary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Human reason exists without the formal state. Mutual respect for life, liberty and property is rational and natural. The state of nature is not chaotic, governance emerges naturally. Reject the idea of natural, primordial state of nature.
