Political Science 212B: The State, Sovereignty, and the Sovereign State

The central organizing theme of this graduate seminar on early modern political thought concerns the sovereign state.  The course begins by investigating major accounts explaining how and why, once largely independent, concepts of statehood and sovereignty were ‘fused’ together to form a narrow hybrid-concept of the ‘sovereign state,’ one that has become the indispensably central unit of analysis in modern state-centric politics.  With this background, the seminar proceeds to study how major textual authorities, including works by Bodin, Grotius, Hobbes, and Rousseau, conceptualized and defended the sovereign state.  Topics to be investigated in the course include the legal personality of states, the rights and duties of states, the government of states (especially the democratic government of states), and the origin and legislative authority of states.