DESPOTISM. — In contemporary political science the term has a pejorative sense and serves to signify an absolute authority which governs above and beyond every law, taking as its sole criterion its own will. Despotism is therefore not, as Montesquieu seems to have understood it, a form of regime, but an aberrant practice, a vice of sovereignty which drives the absoluteness of power to its ultimate conclusion. Its essence consists in unrestrained subjectivism and extreme voluntarism, which recognizes no fixed norm outside the act of will, by which it makes its own caprice the law.
From this concept are deduced the characteristics that mark II. Despotism denies the existence of a necessary and immanent social end within the political organism itself; it rejects any natural or positive, divine or human law; it tolerates no limit to power and suppresses every protective guarantee of the individual, to whom it grants no subjective right; it denies the transcendent value of the human person and of his function within the community; it excludes any participation of citizens or lesser organizations in the management of public affairs. Once law is disavowed, the principle on which it rests, as Montesquieu rightly saw, is fear generated by violence, by which it reduces subjects to slavery. The despot does not aim at the common good nor does he concern himself with the civic education of individuals, whom he rather encloses in a dense network of espionage and police, to reduce them to a thoughtless herd lacking initiative of their own.
As a vice of sovereignty, despotism can arise under any form of regime. It is not necessarily linked to rule by a single person, as Montesquieu maintained, for it can degenerate in monarchical as well as democratic forms, in aristocratic as in popular ones. The French Revolution left the example of a despotism of assembly no less extensive than that of the Eastern emperors. It must nevertheless be admitted with St. Thomas that rule by a single person can more easily become despotic, on account of the sum of powers entrusted to him, to which the necessary virtue does not always correspond for exercising them properly.
In general, despotism resembles both tyranny and absolutism, since all are vices of sovereignty. With the former it is difficult to establish a specific element that clearly distinguishes them. According to the concept of Aristotle, adopted by St. Thomas, tyranny occurs when the monarch governs not with a view to the common good but with a view to his own private good. Tyranny thus supposes an inversion in the ends of power, a deviation from the good of the community to private egoistic good, to which it subordinates public life. Developing this concept, all the elements that mark despotism can be deduced from it, with which it largely coincides.
Not so, however, with absolutism, which refers to that form of regime in which all powers are concentrated in the hands of the monarch, who exercises them independently as his own affair. In its ancient form, expressed by the well-known maxim of the Digest, “Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem,” it most closely resembles despotism; in its more modern form, condensed in the formula of Louis XIV, “L'État c'est moi,” it distances itself from despotism, inasmuch as the absolute prince admitted the bond of a natural and divine law that bound him in conscience. In practice, however, the distinction is not so clear-cut: absolutism often slides into despotism.
Various opinions have been held regarding the essential mark of despotism. For Guizot it would consist in egoism. He is, however, inconsistent, since he classifies among despots monarchs like Charlemagne and Peter the Great, to whom he attributes disinterested aims. Egoism, the origin of many deviations in human conduct, cannot constitute the essence of any of them. It may be a factor in causing power to degenerate in its use: ignorance, pride, fanaticism, political hatred. According to Benjamin Constant, the characteristic mark of despotism would be arbitrariness, inasmuch as power is exercised at discretion. But the discretionary use of power does not always coincide with arbitrariness. In doubtful cases, where the law does not decide the issue, the solution is left to the discretion of the judge *ad arbitrium iudicis*, who in pronouncing sentence is guided by other similar norms (the law of analogy) or by the norms of equity. Moreover, not all particular cases of sovereign arbitrariness can be designated as acts of a despotic government. Such are the measures of urgent necessity, such the impositions of authority in an emerging society, in which, the absence of a nucleus of already fixed laws, the sovereign will dictates them and urges their observance. Constant’s opinion derives from the confusion between arbitrariness and discretion, which are often used interchangeably but do not have the same meaning.
Others, finally, have sought the essential mark of despotism in force. Montesquieu seems inclined to this opinion, inasmuch as he emphasized fear as the intrinsic principle of despotic government. Undoubtedly the means by which the despot bends and renders docile the wills of others is force, which generates servile fear; but the means must not be confused with the end, from which it remains distinct. Moreover, the use of force is not in itself a vice if sovereignty employs it in support of right: it becomes a vice only if it tramples upon and oppresses right. The essence of despotism therefore lies in the manner in which force is used, that is, in the continual violation of justice perpetrated by one who disregards its laws.
In ancient Greece despotism rested on a religious conception that elevated the monarch to the status of divinity and accorded him divine worship, attributing absolute value to his will as law. To indicate the absolute power enjoyed by Eastern princes, the name of despot was given to them, a term also used to signify the supreme authority of the father of a family over slaves. The conception of the divine monarch with the attendant cult passed to Rome, and here too his authority had unlimited extension, as is evidenced by the maxim of the Digest cited above and the current conception of the prince as *legibus solutus*.
This apotheosis of man fell with the advent of Christianity, which lowered power to the sphere of the human and proclaimed the transcendent value of the person and his essential freedom. Throughout the Middle Ages an unchallenged democratic conception of power prevailed, limited in its attributions not only by natural law, the reflection of divine law, but also by the popular will, the original subject of authority, expressed in a tacit or explicit contract (the charters of subjection) with the sovereign. This conception persisted almost down to modern times. Even the theorists of royal absolutism felt its influence, as, for example, Bodin, who, although he defined sovereignty as *legibus soluta*, did not fail to subject it to natural, divine, and international law.
Machiavelli breaks with the medieval and Christian tradition by describing in his *Prince* a true despot. Not far behind him come Hobbes and Rousseau: both, although starting from different principles, arrive at configuring public power as absolute and sovereign will freed from any law, indeed law unto itself. The most modern conception of the State, as an autonomous source of all law—both objective and subjective—and absolute sovereignty that recognizes no legal limit except in the very act of its own will, with its unrestrained subjectivism and voluntarism devoid of any objective and transcendent law, approaches despotism, offering it theoretical foundations. Upon these foundations, with various theoretical nuances, the most modern experiments in government have been built, among which may be counted, besides the now defunct German National Socialism, Russian communism.