Elements of Behavioural Analysis in Kautilya, Machiavelli and Hobbes

We may mention here that the history of political thought within the traditional fold also contains elements of behavioural analysis. Kautilya, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Bentham have contributed in this direction. Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian creed of pain and pleasure, for example, drives from human nature. Kautilya’s Arthashastra presents a very pragmatic view of statecraft and administration. His analysis of danda, or coercive authority, is exemplary in that he presents power as the essence of statecraft. Danda is the means by which the king ensures the protection of his subjects and prevents matsyanyaya (big fish eating small fish), a situation of anarchy. The importance of danda or coercive authority in Kautilya’s analysis is so important that he refers to the art of politics as dandaniti, or the discipline of the policy of coercive authority. By analysing power, Kautilya makes power a unit of analysis in political study. Though his Arthashastra is not a treatise on politics, it presents almost an inter-disciplinary approach in understanding the affairs of statecraft.

Machiavelli’s The Prince is a treatise that presents power as the essence of politics. He shows that human beings are driven by self-interest. Power as the ability to control others by compelling their obedience becomes an essential unit of political analysis in The Prince. The Prince, in essence is a ‘manual on the logic of acquiring and maintaining political power’.⁴⁹ Further, Machiavelli’s insistence on the possession and maintenance of power by the king is also a rejection of values and ethical concerns. His analysis of power as an objective criteria of understanding political behaviour and his insistence on what Sabine calls, ‘moral indifference’⁵⁰ to the use of power has behavioural elements.

Like Machiavelli, Hobbes too presents an analysis of power and makes his analysis a ‘comprehensive science of power’. Following from the human psychology of fear and desire as the basis of understanding human behaviour, Hobbes constructs his political society. He adopts a scientific method based on body and motion. His theory of human nature or human psychology follows a scientific method. He differentiates between vital or involuntary motion, by which are meant basic life functions such as inhalation, digestion, circulation etc. and voluntary motion that are forms of human activity that are willed, such as walking, speaking, etc. Hobbes includes politics and various kinds of social interaction in voluntary motion. It is clear that Hobbes’s voluntary motion stands for what is called behaviour by social scientists.⁵¹ Hobbes, by making voluntary motion the subject matter of political science, necessarily seeks to start from its psychological aspects. He evolves a theory of motion that triggers human voluntary activity. From here emerges the concept of the desire to attain pleasure and avoid pain. And this desire finally leads to ‘perpetual and restless desire of power after power. This method of scientifically establishing power as the basis of human behaviour is Hobbes’s contribution to the behavioural aspect of political science. From this, Hobbes formulates his theory of social contract, powerful State and sovereignty.