Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury at the Political Academy of HNS
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Zagreb, May 13, 2015 – Within the study programme of the IEC and the Academy „Governance in institutions of the state", lectures were held by professor Ana Petek and professor Luka Ribarević from the Faculty of Political Science of Zagreb.
After briefly recounting the last lecture on Bodin, Luka Ribarević talked about another absolutist theorist of the state, Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan. At the beginning of the lecture, Ribarević presented the historical context in which Hobbes was writing, while explaining how it influenced his way of thinking. Just as Bodin, Hobbes thought on how to transcend the state of religious and civil war which was tearing apart his country at that time. Hobbes concluded that a way out from this terrible state was the establishment of the State, which was the only one capable of ensuring peace and security as well as protect the rights of its subjects.
„Thomas Hobbes is important as an author, amongst other things, because of the way his new political community needed to be established- through a social contract of equal individuals in the natural state" said Ribarević, while underlining that for this reason Hobbes is considered to be the founder of modern social contract theory. Hobbes also developed some of the basic ideas of liberal thought such as rights of individuals, natural equality of individuals and representative nature of legitimate government.
Ana Petek held her final lecture on public policies. For the first part of the lecture, students needed to complete a short assignment which had them apply the theoretical knowledge gained during the previous lectures. On the example of the policy of writing off debts of socially endangered citizens, students needed to identify goals, instruments, target groups as well as other theoretic concepts in the assignment text. After the practical part of the lecture, Petek continued with an explanation of differences between policy study, policy analysis and policy advocacy.
„What Croatia lacks most is policy analysis, which should evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of measures with which we are trying to tackle certain social issues", concluded Petek.
We would like to thank professor Petek on her great lectures and we look forward to her participation in the second semester!