Absolutism

C

Absence of Competing Political Parties

Absolutist regimes do not permit free and fair elections, and they usually restrict all competing political parties. Sometimes the ruling party simply outlaws opposition parties, but many absolutist regimes also use police and party activists to break up opposition meetings and to violently attack opposition leaders. Only the official ruling party is permitted to operate openly, and the official party often takes a direct role in controlling the government and society. In many cases the ruling party is tied so closely to the government that it becomes difficult to clearly distinguish the boundaries between the party and government structures. In the USSR, for example, the Communist Party was closely intertwined with the government and was an important source of political power. Some absolutist regimes hold elections to fill seats in the national legislature but hinder opposition parties by arresting their leaders, implementing restrictive and unfair electoral rules, and limiting public gatherings.

D

Appearance of Popular Representation

Historically many absolutist regimes were openly dictatorial, but in the 20th century most absolutist regimes tried to make it look as though they represented the interests of the country and its citizens. In the USSR, for example, the government claimed that its policies were designed to build a society of equality for the Soviet people. In reality, however, the regime favored a small group of powerful people with ties to the Communist Party. Similarly, when Hitler ruled Germany as a dictator he claimed that his power rested on the will of the German people. Some absolutist regimes go to extremes to create the appearance of democracy, holding sham elections that are not truly democratic. They may conduct a closely controlled plebiscite—a direct vote in which voters must accept or reject a decision. But plebiscites rarely offer a genuine choice to the voters. In some cases government leaders have already decided the issue, and the government alters the results of the vote to fit this decision.

III

Intellectual Origins

Philosophers of ancient Greece such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates wrote about forms of government similar to absolutism, but the concept of absolutism itself was not developed extensively until much later. The modern theory of absolutism developed in the 15th century, when many European countries created unified states. During this period some political thinkers attempted to defend the divine right of kings—the assertion that kings and queens represent God’s authority and that they are not subject to the laws that govern ordinary people.

A

Bodin

French Renaissance philosopher Jean Bodin was one of the first thinkers to defend absolutism without relying on religious arguments. He asserted that kings should not be under the power of the Holy Roman Empire, which governed much of Europe from the 9th century until early in the 19th century. At the same time, Bodin argued that kings had the right to rule over all of their subjects and their political institutions. In Six livres de la République (1576; Six Books of the Republic, 1606), he claimed that a state has 'supreme power over citizens and subjects unrestrained by laws,' and he defined a state as a group of families governed by a 'supreme and perpetual power.'

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This notion that governments have broad powers over citizens became a central element in the theory of absolutism. Bodin limited this power, however, by arguing that rulers must be constrained by social customs and natural law. Later theorists of absolutism accepted Bodin’s claim that governments had sweeping powers, but they rejected his claim that custom and natural law should limit those powers.

B

Hobbes

Seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was one of the first modern theorists to argue for the absolute power of governments. Hobbes developed his argument partly because of the political turmoil in England during his lifetime. There were many conflicts in which King Charles I asserted his authority, and some members of Parliament responded by claiming that they had the right to make important decisions. Violence erupted on many occasions. These conflicts convinced Hobbes that peace and order could only be guaranteed if each country had a single, all-powerful authority. In The Leviathan (1651), Hobbes justified this conclusion by describing an imaginary “state of nature” in which people live without government. Hobbes argued that people living in the state of nature would be at constant war with one another. In such a state all people would be free to do whatever they wanted to do, but nobody could enjoy this freedom because all people would have the right to trample the freedoms of others. The only way out of this problem is for all citizens to agree to obey a single power that is strong enough to force everyone to follow rules and live in peace.

In Hobbes’s view, this means that there is an imaginary social contract between citizens that gives the sovereign, as the ultimate political authority, the right to absolute power over all citizens. The sovereign can be a single person, an elected parliament, or a small group of people. The only critical feature, in Hobbes’s view, is that the sovereign have complete power. Unlike Bodin, Hobbes argued that the sovereign’s actions did not have to be limited by customs and natural law. Hobbes's sovereign does not recognize such obligations, but the sovereign can create them and impose them on society.