He believed in it, as certain good women believe in the leviathan-by faith, not by reason. ~ Jules Verne
The Plight of the World
There is no doubt…the world is in chaos.
In this context it is apt to define first of all who or what Leviathan is. The Leviathan originally comes from the Bible, particularly in Job 41, where it is described as a massive sea creature symbolizing chaos and power. Thomas Hobbes draws the political analogy in his book “Leviathan” by saying “Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan remains a formidable touchstone in the discourse on governance and power, its relevance resonating profoundly in the modern political landscape. His assertion that the natural state of man is one of perpetual conflict, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” serves as a dire warning of the consequences of anarchy and the necessity of a strong, centralized authority. The notion that stability is derived from an absolute sovereign finds eerie application in contemporary autocracies, where governments consolidate power under the guise of maintaining order, but in practice, this consolidation often leads to oligarchic rule and systemic human rights violations.
At its core, Leviathan is a treatise on the social contract—an agreement between the ruled and the ruler wherein individuals cede certain freedoms in exchange for protection and civil order. The modern world, however, witnesses an unsettling perversion of this contract. Rather than safeguarding the common good, some states employ Hobbesian logic to justify an unyielding grip on power, reinforcing hierarchical structures that serve a select few. The leviathan, once envisioned as a means of ensuring societal harmony, morphs into an apparatus of control, where the fear of instability is manipulated to perpetuate the authority of a ruling elite. The construct of authority, once designed to provide a bulwark against anarchy, is now wielded as a mechanism of subjugation, ensuring that the structure of power remains impervious to reform or challenge.
This drift towards oligarchy is not incidental but rather an inherent tendency of unchecked authority. The promise of security gradually becomes the pretext for the erosion of democratic principles, the suppression of dissent, and the monopolization of wealth and influence by an elite class. Power, when unrestrained, ceases to be an instrument of collective governance and instead becomes an instrument of personal enrichment. Hobbes’ theory, though advocating for a sovereign with absolute power, did not anticipate the insidious manner in which this power could be wielded against its own people, not as a safeguard against external threats but as a means of internal subjugation. The centralization of control gradually coalesces into a self-perpetuating mechanism where governance is no longer predicated on the welfare of the people but on the preservation of an entrenched elite.
The Machiavellian Twist
Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince provides a complementary perspective, articulating the mechanics of political control with a clinical pragmatism that aligns closely with the practices of modern autocracies. Unlike Hobbes, who emphasized order for the sake of societal stability, Machiavelli viewed power as an end in itself, advocating for the strategic and, at times, ruthless exercise of authority. The contemporary landscape demonstrates an unsettling synthesis of these philosophies: rulers invoke Hobbesian fear to justify their existence while employing Machiavellian tactics to secure their dominance. The result is a governance model where power is perpetuated through coercion, manipulation, and the calculated erosion of institutions that could challenge the state’s supremacy. These regimes no longer justify their existence through governance but through the perpetuation of crises that demand their continued dominance. Fear becomes a currency, exchanged for obedience, while institutions that were once designed to safeguard democracy become instruments of oppression.
Such regimes invariably lead to the infringement of fundamental human rights. The repression of speech, assembly, and political opposition becomes a functional necessity, ensuring that dissent remains fragmented and ineffectual. By curating a narrative of external threats and internal subversion, the state rationalizes its incursions upon personal liberties, positioning itself as the sole arbitrator of national well-being. The Hobbesian sovereign, originally envisioned as the guardian of collective safety, thereby becomes the very entity from which the populace requires protection. It is in this paradox that the fragility of authoritarian governance is laid bare—the very mechanisms employed to entrench power ultimately serve to corrode the legitimacy of the state. A government that rules by fear must remain in a state of perpetual vigilance, suppressing not only external threats but also the inevitable dissatisfaction of the governed.
The Insidious Convergence
The convergence of Hobbesian absolutism and Machiavellian pragmatism in contemporary autocracies signals a profound crisis in governance. The legitimacy of power, historically derived from its capacity to ensure order and prosperity, now hinges on the perpetuation of fear and division. The leviathan, rather than shielding its people from the ravages of the state of nature, instead engineers a new form of chaos—one that is institutionalized, bureaucratized, and wielded with precision to secure the dominance of the few over the many. The result is not merely political stagnation but the erosion of civic trust, the weakening of social cohesion, and the eventual destabilization of the very structures that autocrats seek to preserve. As history has shown, such a system is unsustainable, for the very forces used to entrench power ultimately serve to erode its foundations.
The events that culminated in the downfall of the Sri Lankan government in 2022 provide a good example of an intricate confluence of political mismanagement, economic collapse, and a people’s fervent demand for justice, coalescing into what became known as the “Aragalaya.” The struggle, though borne out of acute suffering, was ultimately a profound repudiation of the state’s descent into a confluence of Hobbesian absolutism and Machiavellian intrigue, where sovereignty morphed into tyranny, and governance descended into a stratagem for power retention rather than the amelioration of the people’s plight.
The legitimacy of any government rests upon its ability to provide security and welfare to its citizens, a principle deeply embedded in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes posited that the natural state of mankind was one of chaos, requiring a sovereign power to instill order and prevent the descent into anarchy. The social contract, according to Hobbes, was a necessary compromise where citizens surrendered absolute liberty in exchange for protection and stability. However, what transpired in Sri Lanka was an egregious breach of this contract, where the state, rather than acting as a protective Leviathan, turned into a predatory force, siphoning public resources and governing with an utter disregard for the people’s welfare. The fundamental tenet of Hobbes’ political philosophy—stability over anarchy—was rendered moot by the very conditions the government created: runaway inflation, scarcity of essentials, and the dismantling of public trust in institutions.
My Take
What, then, is to be made of this trend? The trajectory of modern autocracies suggests that power, when wielded without accountability, is inherently self-destructive. While authoritarianism may provide a temporary illusion of stability, it is an unstable equilibrium, perpetually teetering on the edge of collapse. The fabric of society, when stretched by repression and the denial of fundamental rights, eventually frays, leading to unpredictable ruptures. Political power, though formidable, is not impervious to the forces of history, and no leviathan, no matter how vast, can withstand the inexorable tide of human aspiration for freedom and dignity. The modern world, confronted with this enduring struggle between authority and liberty, must reckon with the lessons of Hobbes and Machiavelli—not as blueprints for governance, but as warnings of what transpires when power is left unchecked. The ultimate fate of any autocracy is not determined solely by its leaders but by the resilience and will of those it seeks to subjugate.
Parallel to Hobbes’ framework is Niccolò Machiavelli’s treatise in The Prince, where power is to be wielded with calculated ruthlessness, favoring pragmatism over morality. The Rajapaksa administration, long entrenched in Sri Lanka’s political fabric, embodied many of Machiavelli’s axioms—favoring deception, control over opposition, and the concentration of authority within a familial oligarchy. The Rajapaksas had, over decades, cultivated an image of strongman rule, bolstered by ethno-nationalist rhetoric and an extensive patronage network. They maneuvered their governance with an acute awareness of Machiavelli’s warning that it is safer for a ruler to be feared than loved, ensuring that dissent was met with coercion and that loyalty was maintained through economic incentives.
However, Machiavelli’s lessons on statecraft also caution against the erosion of public support, which he considered indispensable for a ruler’s endurance. He observed that while deception and force are necessary tools of governance, a prince should never push his people to the point where they have nothing to lose. The Rajapaksa administration, despite its calculated maneuvers, failed to recognize this threshold. The people, driven to despair by inflation exceeding 50%, shortages of fuel and food, and pervasive corruption, no longer viewed the state as a guardian but as an adversary. The collapse of Sri Lanka’s economy, exacerbated by reckless tax cuts, an ill-advised organic farming mandate, and the depletion of foreign reserves, marked a complete disintegration of public trust. The government’s refusal to acknowledge its miscalculations and its continued reliance on repression only served to hasten its demise.
The Aragalaya was thus more than an outburst of economic frustration; it was an existential rejection of both the Hobbesian contract and Machiavellian realpolitik. The protests, peaceful yet forceful, symbolized a collective assertion that the state, in its failure to provide security and stability, had forfeited its claim to legitimacy. This mass uprising was not merely an anarchic challenge to authority but a deliberate assertion of democratic agency against an administration that had overstepped its bounds. The occupation of the Presidential Secretariat and the symbolic storming of the President’s House were acts of civil reclamation rather than insurrection, a direct response to a government that had ceased to be a legitimate Leviathan and had instead become a parasitic entity thriving on public suffering.
The interplay between Hobbes and Machiavelli in Sri Lanka’s crisis was not merely theoretical but deeply embedded in the lived experiences of its citizens. While Hobbes would argue that the necessity of order justified centralized authority, the government’s inability to maintain even basic governance eroded this justification entirely. Machiavelli, in turn, would have warned that a ruler who disregards the limits of public tolerance courts disaster. The Aragalaya was, in essence, the inevitable outcome of a government that sought to merge the worst excesses of both philosophies: the Leviathan’s coercion without its protective role, and The Prince’s cunning without its strategic foresight.
Yet, the question remains whether the Aragalaya was ultimately successful in redefining the contours of Sri Lankan governance. The resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the dismantling of his family’s grip on power were undoubtedly victories for the protest movement. However, the entrenched nature of the country’s political elite, coupled with the structural deficiencies in its governance, suggests that the struggle against Hobbesian absolutism and Machiavellian deception is far from over. The subsequent appointment of Ranil Wickremesinghe as President, a figure deeply intertwined with the existing political order, indicated a mere reshuffling rather than a radical transformation. The challenge now lies in ensuring that the momentum of the Aragalaya translates into systemic change rather than a temporary rupture.
The downfall of the Sri Lankan government in 2022 was a testament to the limits of unchecked power and the resilience of democratic assertion. The Aragalaya was not just a reaction to economic collapse but a conscious rejection of governance that sought to rule through fear and manipulation. It demonstrated that the people, when pushed beyond endurance, will reclaim their agency, challenging both the Leviathan’s grip and the Prince’s guile. The lesson for any government is clear: sovereignty is not an end in itself but a responsibility, and when that responsibility is abandoned, no amount of force or cunning can forestall the reckoning of the people.
The collapse of autocratic regimes follows an inexorable pattern that mirrors the trajectory of the Aragalaya: an initial accumulation of power, a systematic erosion of opposition, and a reckless disregard for the governed. Whether in Sri Lanka or elsewhere, the moment a government ceases to serve its people, its authority transforms into a fragile illusion. The Leviathan, when it overreaches, becomes a beast that consumes itself, and The Prince, when he miscalculates the endurance of the people, invites his own undoing. The interplay of deception, repression, and economic mismanagement in contemporary autocracies—from Eastern Europe to Latin America—echoes the Rajapaksas’ missteps, underscoring the universal truth that no amount of force can suppress a populace determined to reclaim its dignity.
The Aragalaya provides a good “heads up” to contemporaneous autocracies. What Aragalaya signifies for the global political landscape is that the endurance of authoritarianism is not guaranteed, and even the most fortified rulers are vulnerable to the will of an awakened citizenry. Governments that fail to recognize the warning signs—where the social contract is irreparably breached—will eventually face their own reckoning. The downfall of any autocratic regime is not merely a consequence of economic miscalculation but an inevitable collapse of legitimacy. The ultimate lesson is that political power, however absolute it may seem, is always conditional upon the consent of the governed, and history remains an unyielding witness to the fates of those who disregard this immutable truth.
