Contemporary Political Thought

Political power has greatly accumulated during recent centuries in the growth of the nation state with its much more efficient instruments of compulsion. It has, therefore become all the more necessary for power to be studied, explained, justified and the limits to it, if any, defined. But if it has grown, so also has the social consciousness developed; so too has the growth of scientific knowledge increased awareness of the possibilities of controlling environment, From accepting the position of being a victim of power the citizen seeks to become its master and to use it for his own ends. Consequently, when confronted by leviathan, the political theorist imbued with a liberal humanism lays all the greater emphasis on, and draws all the wider his definition of, rights as a counterblast to its claims.