Is the state a force for freedom, or its enemy? Do building liberal and efficacious state institutions constitute a necessary precondition for achieving the state of freedom? Or is state an endemic enemy of liberty, so that its champion, while tolerating state as a necessary evil, has to always fight against it to clear greater space for liberty? This is a central problem—perhaps the central problem—for classical liberal theory and its crucial distinction between the state of nature and the civil state. Which is better for liberty: nature or the state?
About the Author
Ghia Nodia is director of the International School for Political Science and professor of political science at Ilia State University in Tbilisi. He is also chairman of the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development. For five months in 2016–17, he was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C.
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