Origin of the State: social contract and evolutionary theories

1. Why the question matters

How the State began is partly a historical question with no recorded answer, and partly a question of justification: a theory of origin is usually a theory of why we should obey. The divine-right theory supported absolute kings; the contract theory supported limited government and popular sovereignty.

2. The minor theories (brief)

• Divine origin. The State is created by God and the king is His agent, answerable only to Him. Found in the Old Testament, in the Mahabharata, and in the claims of James I of England (The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, 1598) and Robert Filmer (Patriarcha). Criticised as unhistorical, as a support for tyranny, and as inconsistent with democracy; the rise of secular thought and of the contract theory ended it.
• Force theory. The State is the result of the conquest of the weak by the strong. Supported by Jenks, Oppenheimer and, in its own way, by the Marxists. Force played a part, but it cannot explain the continued obedience of citizens; as T.H. Green put it, will, not force, is the basis of the State.
• Patriarchal theory (Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law, 1861): the State grew from the family headed by the eldest male, expanding into the clan and the tribe.
• Matriarchal theory (McLennan, Morgan, Jenks): early society traced kinship through the mother, and the patriarchal family came later.

The patriarchal and matriarchal theories both show that kinship was an early bond, but neither explains territory or sovereignty, and early societies show both patterns.

3. The social contract theory

The common structure: men first lived in a state of nature without government; because of its defects they made a contract and created civil society and the State. The three writers differ on what the state of nature was like and on what the contract produced.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Leviathan (1651)

• Human nature: selfish, fearful, driven by the desire for power and self-preservation.
• State of nature: a war of every man against every man, in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. No property, no justice, no industry.
• Contract: each man agrees with every other to surrender all his natural rights to one man or assembly, on condition that the others do the same. The sovereign is not a party to the contract.
• Result: an absolute and undivided sovereign, the Leviathan. The subject has no right to rebel; the only right he keeps is to defend his life.
• Context: written during and after the English Civil War. Hobbes wanted order above all.

John Locke (1632–1704), Two Treatises of Government (1690)

• State of nature: peaceful and governed by natural law, under which men had rights to life, liberty and property. Its defect was the lack of a known law, an impartial judge and a power to enforce judgments.
• Contract: men gave up only the right to interpret and enforce natural law, and kept their natural rights.
• Result: limited, constitutional government held in trust. If it breaks the trust, the people may remove it. Locke defended the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), The Social Contract (1762)

• “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
• State of nature: at first an idyllic life of the “noble savage”, later corrupted by private property and inequality.
• Contract: each person gives himself wholly to the community, and receives back his rights as a member of it. Sovereignty lies in the general will, which is inalienable and indivisible.
• Result: popular sovereignty; inspired the French Revolution.

Criticism. Unhistorical: there is no evidence of such a contract. Illogical: men in a state of nature could not have had the idea of rights and contracts, which presuppose a society. Dangerous: if the State rests on contract, any citizen can break it. Maine showed that early society moved from status to contract, not the other way. Its value: it made consent the basis of government, gave us the idea of popular sovereignty, and shaped the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Revolution.

4. The evolutionary (historical) theory

This is the accepted theory. Garner: the State is neither the handiwork of God, nor the result of superior physical force, nor the creation of resolution or convention, nor a mere expansion of the family; it is a slow product of historical evolution. Leacock: the State is a growth, an evolution, the result of a gradual process running through all the known history of man. Burgess called it the gradual and continuous development of human society.

The factors that combined to produce it:

1. Kinship. Blood relationship was the first bond. The family grew into the clan and the tribe; the head of the family became the chief. MacIver: kinship creates society, and society at length creates the State.
2. Religion. Worship of common ancestors and common gods held kin groups together and gave authority to priest-kings. Gettell: religion and kinship were two aspects of the same thing in early society.
3. Force and war. War needed leadership and discipline, and conquest joined tribes into kingdoms. Force contributed, but was one factor, not the whole cause.
4. Economic activities. The move from hunting to pastoral life and then to settled agriculture created property, a need for rules about it, and a need for defence of land. Settlement gave the State its territory.
5. Political consciousness. The awareness of common needs (order, protection, justice) that can be met only through an organised authority. Gilchrist treats this as the chief element.

Conclusion. No single factor made the State. It grew over a long period as these forces acted together, and it is still developing: from the city-state through empire and the feudal State to the modern nation-State and the welfare State.

How this is examined

January 2026 (100-mark): “Explain the social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes with regard to the origin of State” (16 marks). June 2025: “Discuss the origin theory of the State” (10 marks). Short notes on the “Evolutionary theory of state” (August 2024) and the “Divine origin theory” (April 2023) carry 6 marks each. For a general question, write the minor theories in one paragraph each, the contract theory with the table, and finish with the evolutionary theory as the accepted view. For a Hobbes question, write human nature, state of nature, contract, the Leviathan, criticism (absolutism, no right to resist) and his contribution (the first modern theory of sovereignty and of the State as a human creation).