Abstract
This chapter proposes a reconceptualisation of international political space, in light of a revised reading of what Hobbes offers to international political theory and with support derived from Hobbes for the crucial inter-constitution of the concepts of sovereignty and politics. A misreading of Hobbes’s theory has been central to the mainstream conceptualisation of international political space in International Relations. Analysis of the misrepresentations of Hobbes’s theory is a vital step towards developing a viable relationship between political theory and international relations theory. By reassessing the value and complexity of Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty, this chapter contributes to an international theory with a richer notion of international space. In this refined view, international theory can be understood as as a field of politics rather than just the study of the inter-state clash of national interests in a balance of power. Hobbes is self-consciously aware of the intimate connection between sovereignty and what we would now call politics, and he recognises, in a seventeenth-century context, that the role of the sovereign internally, and the actions of sovereign states externally, are highly political. He establishes his conception of sovereignty – the greatest accomplishment of the artifice of men – precisely as a solution to politics.
Published Version
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