Hobbesian Wars and Democracy

Abstract: Political authority produces civil peace because a functioning state monopolizes violence (Weber, 1994; Acemoglu et al. 2012). Hobbes argues that against the war of "all against all", the only guardian is a sovereign with unlimited power. In this paper, we turn Hobbes's argument on its head. In a very general setup, we show that a Hobbesian kingship is the ultimate cause of perpetual civil wars. The Hobbesian fight over the kingship can only be prevented by a unanimous democracy. An extended model demonstrates that the unanimous democracy is stabilized by a separation between the executive and the legislature. A majoritarian democracy can prevent Hobbesian wars through a separation between the executive and the judiciary, but only after socioeconomic modernization. Thus, the extended model explains how the separation of powers evolves over the modernization process and why pre-modern democracies embed much stronger veto power than modern democracies (Finer, 1997; Stasavage, 2020).