ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origin and evolution of the modern Hobbesian State, explaining its inextricable connection to the failure of the unified nature of the Deity in the early-seventeenth century and its evolution through the influence of the political tradition, leading to the reasons for the failure of the State as an absolutist-sympathetic magnitude in the mid-twentieth century. This is also the background to the emergence of the Market State which – through the impact of neoliberalism – has produced the disruptions of politico-cultural populism, with its consequential undermining of constitutionalism and the rule of law. Political populism is presented as an anachronistic response to these factors when the State itself is already moving in an entirely new direction through digitised platformism. The argument is put that these present challenges are directly traceable to the irreconcilability between sought absolutism and aspirational sympathy that were initially built into the nature of the modern State and remain with it, despite its evolving through its more recent forms, and are explained by the functioning of the complex of dynamics.
