ABSTRACT
Locke is usually read as a critic of state power, but he was also a defender of an activist executive. He legitimated the overthrow of monarchical absolutism but also the new ‘fiscal-military state’ inaugurated by the English Revolution. In the Two Treatises executive and ‘federative’ powers are authorised by the community as assuredly as is legislative power. Defence against foreign threats was a desideratum, and this requires autonomous discretionary power in the hands of the ruler. Politics thereby involves phronesis, practical judgement, as well as nomos, law-making. In our contemporary world, especially post 9/11, Lockean executive power has become entangled with Carl Schmitt’s concept of ‘states of exception.’
