But where this logic had imbued the medieval monarch, or sovereign, with ‘the right to decide life and death’ (link, p. 135), for the biopolitical state, ‘death could [only] be directly or indirectly inflicted … to the extent that it promoted the life and interests of the social body’ (link, pp. 605-6).
Here, Hobbes’ notion of the state-as-Leviathan stood as a desacralization of the political, in which the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ was replaced with a social contract, signalling the submission of the political community to a constitutional sovereign. This Hobbesian constitutionalism hybridised of the divine authoritarianism of the res publica Christiana with the governmentality of the modern state. And while Foucault may have disavowed Hobbes as a ‘false paternity’, ‘Hobbesian subjects could be counted upon to take whatever steps were required to defer death and prolong their lives, and were precisely the sort of individuals who were fit for the exercise of bio-power.’ (ibid, p. 614)
In this context, there is nothing to prevent an interpretation of Westphalia as the initial foundations for a ‘biopower’ rooted in the exertions of ‘a positive influence on life, that endeavours to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations.’ (link, pp. 136-7)
