Hobbesian Anarchy Research Articles

Property and international relations: lessons from Locke on anarchy and sovereignty

AbstractProperty has a ubiquitous presence in international practice, but its implications for theorizing world order are not adequately explored. I remedy this by showing how property constitutes the core concepts of anarchy and sovereignty in international relations (IR) as overlapping spaces of right-based governance. I develop my account of a property-based world order in relation to the work of John Locke. Locke is generally overlooked as a core IR thinker, with the unfortunate consequence that anarchy and sovereignty are conceptualized as polar opposites under the enduring shadow of Hobbes. Even prominent critics of Hobbesian anarchy rely on Hobbesian notions of sovereignty, resulting in minimalist conceptions of international society and international ethics. To counter these Hobbesian legacies, I turn to Locke's limited, plural, and fluid accounts of anarchy and sovereignty and show how they are grounded in a normative notion of property that mutually constitutes them. This provides an alternative to the Hobbesian absolutist conceptions of anarchy and sovereignty that many IR theorists still operate with. The result is a distinctly normative vision for IR that condemns the twin evils of conquest and tyranny.

The invention of Hobbesian anarchy

It is only in the early decades of the twentieth century that the “Hobbesian state of nature” and the “discourse of anarchy” came to be seen as virtually synonymous. In examining Hobbes’ international state of nature, this article rejects two common views. In one, International Relations is seen as a warlike “Hobbesian” anarchy, and in the other, Hobbes is regarded as the progenitor of Realism. Far from defending anarchy of states, Hobbes in fact constructs a largely ameliorative international arena.

While the Crisis Proceeds: A World Redistribution of Economic Power?

The crisis has drawn attention to the fact that not only emerging powers but other regions of the world as well may be offering different development models and may constitute into alternative, in some dimensions more positive agents, in the conduct of the present stage of globalisation. Notwithstanding, the traditional western powers have not lost a large amount of control of the world economy. And the crisis proceeds, reallocating world power as in a Hobbesian anarchy. It is difficult to foresee smooth developments in the near future. On the contrary, multilateralism seems to be losing ground to unilateral action or bilateral arrangements. More or less disguised currency wars may lead to serious disequilibria, and turf wars may become more frequent, with motives ranging from securing captive markets to control of specific commodities and energy goods, or targeted regulatory frameworks. As economic policy becomes even more involved with defence and security affairs, the feedbacks from each side to the other seem likely to keep dissent and animosity high, rather than contributing to peaceful and constructive approaches. A more trouble-prone world may be easily expected.

The Paradise Story

This article draws on constitutional political economy, especially the works of James Buchanan, in order to analyze the paradise story. This study applies constitutional economic concepts such as Hobbesian anarchy, predation behaviour, the natural distribution state, (dis-)armament investments, and constitutional contract. The purpose of this reconstruction is to better understand why ultimately the interactions between God and Adam & Eve broke down. This article demonstrates that the Old Testament is rather modern in this respect, choosing a destructive conflict model at the outset. This provides a reference point for subsequent Bible stories when developing new, fairer, and more equally negotiated constitutional contracts between God and humans (especially through the new covenants of Genesis).

Out of a slave contract: the analysis of pre-Hobbesian anarchists in the Old Testament

Buchanan’s constitutional economics takes social conflict (the ‘Hobbesian jungle’, ‘Hobbesian anarchy’) as the starting point for the analysis of social contract. Buchanan argues that in the presence of social conflict either some social contract (e.g. some system of formal laws) or some generally shared moral precepts are needed to resolve the predicament that social conflict presents. The present paper argues that a social conflict model also served the Old Testament as an analytical starting point. However, contrary to both standard theological interpretation and Buchanan’s explicit claims, I argue that the Old Testament had already made an attempt to model ‘Hobbesian anarchy’ in order to approach social conflict in an essentially modern, non-metaphysical manner. I argue that figures like Adam and Eve or Jacob, in the tradition of Hobbesian anarchists, questioned godly authority and the associated imposed, authoritarian, metaphysical social contract. In this way, one can detect a modern, contractarian constitutional economics in pre-Enlightenment literature (and in Genesis, specifically) in direct contrast to Buchanan’s claims.

Spatial pillage game

A pillage game is a coalitional game as a model of Hobbesian anarchy. The spatial pillage game introduces a spatial feature into the pillage game. Players are located in regions and can travel from one region to another. The players can form a coalition and combine their power only within their destination regions, which limits the exertion of the power of each coalition. Under this spatial restriction, a coalition can pillage less powerful coalitions without any cost. The feasibility of pillages between coalitions determines the dominance relation that defines stable states in which powers among the players are endogenously balanced. With the spatial restriction, the set of stable states changes. However, if the players have forecasting ability, then the set of stable states does not change with the spatial restriction. Core, stable set, and farsighted core are adopted as alternative solution concepts.

Power and efficiency in production pillage games

A pillage game is a formal model of Hobbesian anarchy as a coalitional game. The technology of pillage is specified by a power function that determines the power of each coalition as a function of its members and their wealth. A coalition can despoil any other coalition less powerful than itself. The present paper studies the problem of achieving an efficient allocation of resources when the required reallocation changes the distribution of power. For example, land redistribution may increase total production, but may also deprive the original owners of the power they need to compel compensation. In this case the original owners would block the redistribution. Previous work on pillage games has focused on the stable set (von Neumann–Morgenstern solution) as a representation of a stable balance of power. However, the balance of power is typically too delicate to support all efficient allocations. The present paper shows that for a large class of power functions, a recently developed extension of the stable set, called the legitimate set, can be rich enough to support all efficient allocations.

Pillage and property

This paper introduces a class of coalitional games, called pillage games, as a model of Hobbesian anarchy. Any coalition can pillage, costlessly and with certainty, any less powerful coalition. Power is endogenous, so a pillage game does not have a characteristic function, but pillage provides a domination concept that defines a stable set, which represents an endogenous balance of power. Every stable set contains only finitely many allocations, and can be represented as a farsighted core. Additional results are obtained for particular games, including the game in which the power of each coalition is determined by its total wealth.

Of Hobbes and Hospitality in Diderot'sSupplement to the Voyage of Bougainville

The Enlightenment philosophe Diderot's Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville offers rich possibilities for theorizing relations among nations and encounters among mutually foreign peoples. In the Supplement and related texts, Diderot takes hospitality as the paradigmatic standard for all human sociability. Consequently, he uses practices of hospitality as the standpoint from which to criticize French colonization of inhabited land. Diderot presents “Hobbist” French colonial practices in the figure of the French explorer Bougainville, whose hospitable reception by native Tahitians did not prevent him from violating a host/guest relationship in claiming Tahiti for the French crown. Starting from Diderot's comparison of Bougainville to Hobbes, this essay puts Diderotian hospitality into relief through an extended contrast between it and Hobbesian anarchy.

Optimal jurisdictions and the economic theory of the state: Or, anarchy and one-world government are only corner solutions

As I see it, a genuinely economic theory of the nation state must satisfy at least two criteria: (1) it has to explain why a community of self-seeking individuals is better off with certain forms of decision-making centralized rather than dispersed, and (2) it has to explain what factors determine the optimal jurisdictional area over which this centralized decision-making will take place. At the risk of oversimplification we may say that an economic theory of the state must explain why both anarchism and one-world government are generally non-optimal political arrangements. Recently, James Buchanan (1975: 1-73) and Robert Nozick (1974: 3-119) offered economic accounts of the origin of the nation state. In their view, the nation state emerged to reconcile quarrels among self-seeking individuals that invariably occur in the 'state of nature'. Inasmuch as quarrels add to the transaction costs of economic activity, a rational basis exists for the creation and maintenance of a quarrel-quelling agency of one sort or another. Buchanan named his quarrel-quelling agency the 'protective state', and Nozick named his the 'minimal state'. However, the fact that Buchanan saw his 'protective state' as being grafted onto a discordant 'state of nature' by way of a social contract and that Nozick saw his 'minimal state' as gradually evolving out of the competitive market process (the unintended result of self-seeking behavior), suggests that the modern Hobbesian and the modern Lockean have little in common. Yet, as I shall demonstrate, they have much in common. In fact, Buchanan's theory of the 'protective state' and Nozick's theory of the 'minimal state' are essentially complementary and together provide a novel framework for developing an economic theory of the state that meets the two aforementioned criteria. In summarizing their arguments, I shall apply the model of McGuire's (1974) analysis of the technology of public-goods provision. In this way the Buchanan-Nozick theory may be used to derive an empirical theory of early state formation. I must emphasize that it is the public-goods model that provides the framework for combining or reconciling the two theories. I In Buchanan's characterization of the state of nature--appropriately termed Hobbesian anarchy--there is no general agreement about property rights or how property (once assigned) may be legitimately transferred in the present and in the future and from the present into the future. Individuals engage in defense and predation activities and the private provision of their other wants. The entire community is at war with one another until finally a stand-off equilibrium is reached. In equilibrium each individual's time is divided between productive and warlike activities so as to equate benefits at the margin. (1) The interest of the many is clearly served by the negotiation of a nonaggression pact whereby each individual agrees to reduce his defense/ predation expenditure on the condition that the others do the same. This pact requires some agreement about what Buchanan called the 'original' distribution of property rights. Each individual agrees to give up some of his claims on others and their possessions if they do likewise, and eventually this 'social contract' creates the framework within which other exchange institutions may evolve and promote a widespread division of labor. Obviously, no one will unilaterally disarm (or reduce his arms expenditure) in this Hobbesian war of 'all against all' unless he believes that the others are simultaneously doing the same. (2) This is the raison d'etre of what Buchanan called the protective state. It is introduced to protect property rights under the original agreement by keeping men to their promises and imposing the 'status quo' on new generations as they appear. In cases of dispute or transgression the 'protective state' decides who is liable and what type of settlement is appropriate. Most important to its functioning the protective state determines when force may be legitimately employed in social relations. …