John Locke changed and influenced the world in many ways. His political ideas like those in the Two Treatises of Government, such as civil, natural, and property rights and the job of the government to protect these rights , were put into the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution. Locke presents his case for what we would call modern liberal democracy. He created the modern emphasis on constitutionalism that defines, in part, the relationship between the political system and the bureaucracy.
Finally, he was an important link in the development of modern executive and legislative power. Everyone gains the security of knowing that their rights to life, liberty, and property are protected. According to Locke, the main purpose of government is to protect those natural rights that the individual cannot effectively protect in a state of nature.
Specifically for law enforcement, social contract theory is important to justify the power that law enforcement can exert over the population as a whole Evans and MacMillan, The power imbalance, held by law enforcement, is part of the contract that society has agreed upon in exchange for security.
Hobbes was a proponent of Absolutism, a system which placed control of the state in the hands of a single individual, a monarch free from all forms of limitations or accountability. Locke, on the other hand, favored a more open approach to state-building. Contracts involve mutual surrenders of rights. Covenants are the most important case of contracts because they involve promises of future action.
He generally agreed with Hobbes about the brutality of the state of nature, which required a social contract to assure peace. But he disagreed with Hobbes on two major points. First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property existed in the state of nature and could never be taken away or even voluntarily given up by individuals.
Locke also disagreed with Hobbes about the social contract. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign preferably a king. According to Locke, the natural rights of individuals limited the power of the king. The king did not hold absolute power, as Hobbes had said, but acted only to enforce and protect the natural rights of the people.
If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract was broken, and the people had the right to revolt and establish a new government. Although Locke spoke out for freedom of thought, speech, and religion, he believed property to be the most important natural right.
He declared that owners may do whatever they want with their property as long as they do not invade the rights of others. Locke favored a representative government such as the English Parliament, which had a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted representatives to be only men of property and business.
Consequently, only adult male property owners should have the right to vote. Locke was reluctant to allow the propertyless masses of people to participate in government because he believed that they were unfit. The executive prime minister and courts would be creations of the legislature and under its authority. Montesquieu was born into a noble family and educated in the law. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, including England, where he studied the Parliament.
Montesquieu published his greatest work, The Spirit of the Laws , in Unlike Hobbes and Locke, Montesquieu believed that in the state of nature individuals were so fearful that they avoided violence and war. The need for food, Montesquieu said, caused the timid humans to associate with others and seek to live in a society. Montesquieu did not describe a social contract as such.
But he said that the state of war among individuals and nations led to human laws and government. Montesquieu wrote that the main purpose of government is to maintain law and order, political liberty, and the property of the individual. Montesquieu opposed the absolute monarchy of his home country and favored the English system as the best model of government. Montesquieu somewhat misinterpreted how political power was actually exercised in England.
When he wrote The Spirit of the Laws , power was concentrated pretty much in Parliament, the national legislature. Montesquieu thought he saw a separation and balancing of the powers of government in England. Montesquieu viewed the English king as exercising executive power balanced by the law-making Parliament, which was itself divided into the House of Lords and the House of Commons, each checking the other.
Then, the executive and legislative branches were still further balanced by an independent court system. Montesquieu concluded that the best form of government was one in which the legislative, executive, and judicial powers were separate and kept each other in check to prevent any branch from becoming too powerful. He believed that uniting these powers, as in the monarchy of Louis XIV, would lead to despotism.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau — was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where all adult male citizens could vote for a representative government. Rousseau traveled in France and Italy, educating himself. In , he won an essay contest. His fresh view that man was naturally good and was corrupted by society made him a celebrity in the French salons where artists, scientists, and writers gathered to discuss the latest ideas.
A few years later he published another essay in which he described savages in a state of nature as free, equal, peaceful, and happy. When people began to claim ownership of property, Rousseau argued, inequality, murder, and war resulted. According to Rousseau, the powerful rich stole the land belonging to everyone and fooled the common people into accepting them as rulers. Rousseau concluded that the social contract was not a willing agreement, as Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu had believed, but a fraud against the people committed by the rich.
In , Rousseau published his most important work on political theory, The Social Contract. Rousseau argued that the general will of the people could not be decided by elected representatives.
He believed in a direct democracy in which everyone voted to express the general will and to make the laws of the land. Rousseau had in mind a democracy on a small scale, a city-state like his native Geneva. Montesquieu is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. The Spirit of the Laws is a treatise on political theory first published anonymously by Montesquieu in In , Thomas Nugent published the first English translation.
Montesquieu spent around 21 years researching and writing The Spirit of the Laws , covering many things, including the law, social life, and the study of anthropology, and providing more than 3, commendations. In this political treatise, Montesquieu pleaded in favor of a constitutional system of government and the separation of powers, the ending of slavery, the preservation of civil liberties and the law, and the idea that political institutions should reflect the social and geographical aspects of each community.
Montesquieu defines three main political systems: republican, monarchical, and despotic. As he defines them, republican political systems vary depending on how broadly they extend citizenship rights—those that extend citizenship relatively broadly are termed democratic republics, while those that restrict citizenship more narrowly are termed aristocratic republics.
The distinction between monarchy and despotism hinges on whether or not a fixed set of laws exists that can restrain the authority of the ruler. If so, the regime counts as a monarchy. If not, it counts as despotism. A second major theme in The Spirit of Laws concerns political liberty and the best means of preserving it.
He distinguishes this view of liberty from two other, misleading views of political liberty. The first is the view that liberty consists in collective self-government i. The second is the view that liberty consists of being able to do whatever one wants without constraint. Political liberty is not possible in a despotic political system, but it is possible, though not guaranteed, in republics and monarchies.
Generally speaking, establishing political liberty requires two things: the separation of the powers of government, and the appropriate framing of civil and criminal laws so as to ensure personal security. Montesquieu based this model on the Constitution of the Roman Republic and the British constitutional system.
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