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The abusive authoritarianism of the state
Peter Kopa, Tenerife, January 17, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDJzRMaydTk
The following review of the book The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025), written by Flavio Felice, was originally published in City Journal on November 20, 2025.The author of the book is Prof. David Thunder, University of Navarra, Spain. Below we offer a review with some concluding comments, considering that the topic is highly relevant in the context of current political events. https://www.city-journal.org/article/david-thunder-the-polycentric-republic-civil
“The modern sovereign state, even if it does not exercise perfectly supreme or exhaustive control over civil order, is animated by a deeply problematic ideology of order that leads officials to exert disproportionate influence over citizens and associations.”
With these words, David Thunder concludes his book The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies, which won the Vatican’s Joseph Ratzinger Foundation’s Open Reason Award 2025 in September 2025 at the Holy See. The book outlines Thunder’s vision of a republic that values pluralism and categorically rejects monism, which consists of the claim that the state can govern irreducible civil pluralism based on its sovereignty.
Polycentrism is basically another term for the idea of “plurararchy,” developed by Italian thinker Luigi Sturzo in 1935 during his exile in London. Sturzo described polycentrism-plurararchy as “the formation of different centers of social coexistence, with their own autonomy and mutual contact, sometimes tolerant, sometimes combative.” Civil society is essential to the polycentric republic, as it serves as a bulwark against absolutist pretensions and cultivates a critical mindset that disposes citizens to resist the hegemonic ambitions of any political faction.
Defense of pluralism
https://www.labsus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Bright_Documento_ENG.pdf
Civil society is made up of diverse territorial and non-territorial communities, social formations, and economic, social, and religious entities. If we treat these groups with respect for their legitimate differences, we see the need for both “horizontal” and “vertical” forms of subsidiarity.
“Horizontal subsidiarity”—the principle whereby the state and other government bodies encourage citizens to take the initiative in carrying out activities of general interest—ensures a balanced distribution of tasks and responsibilities between the state and private entities. “Vertical subsidiarity”—the principle that administrative functions should be performed at the level of government (municipal) closest to the citizens—distributes powers and functions appropriately among the different territorial levels of state administration. Together, these forms of subsidiarity offer a way to harmonize plural interests and to integrate government with governance, based on a bottom-up dynamic.
Thunder opposes the idea of the totalitarian state. At the heart of this conception of political authority is the supposed right of rulers to control comprehensive civil power. This totalitarian or “monistic” state does not recognize any reality that cannot be traced back to itself. It therefore absorbs all civil society and erroneously proclaims its own ‘sovereignty’ in the name of “the people.” https://catholicsocialthought.org.uk/the-polycentric-republic-theory-of-civil-order-for-free-and-diverse-societies/
Basing the authority of the state exclusively on the will of the “people” — understood as a shapeless mass of isolated individuals with little communication between them — eliminates the initiative and power of intermediate bodies, what Edmund Burke called “little platoons.” These realities constitute civil society (the family, educational institutions, etc.), where human personality is formed. Denying their existence is characteristic of a state that illegitimately seeks to rule without restrictions in the name of the “sovereign people.”
The ideological corruption of the totalitarian state
When intermediate bodies are excluded from the process of generating authority in democratic societies, Thunder asserts, the freedom and autonomy of the people who comprise them cannot be effectively vindicated. Their protests inevitably clash with the state, which thus becomes an entity as artificial as it is powerful, apparently operating in the name of the “sovereign people,” but in practice serving the interests of the ruling elite.Thunder argues that the most troubling aspect of the state paradigm, rooted in social contract theory, is not only that the state accumulates excessive power, but that it becomes intrinsically incapable of recognizing the sources of autonomy and legitimate claims of the numerous intermediate groups under its authority.
Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre, F. A. Hayek, and Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, Thunder contrasts his polycentric republic with any form of centralism. Subsidiarity—the principle of entrusting tasks and decisions to the most appropriate level of government or organization—gives citizens real participation in state authority. It allows them to take part in the decisions that shape their own lives. The principle of subsidiarity offers a way of ordering and managing the numerous institutional centers that no modern society can reduce to a single one. Above all, it opposes monism, the belief that a single faction, convinced of its own truth, can claim the power to convert the pluralism of intermediate societies into a uniform whole.
Concluding remarks
In recent decades, the ambition of totalitarian power has manifested itself in a growing bureaucracy that seeks to monitor and control every individual. Then there are the high taxes of almost 50% in some OECD countries, necessary to finance the hoarding of functions that would belong to intermediate bodies. All this, by denying individuals their freedom, stifles and annihilates their enormous scientific and economic potential. We see this in communist countries, for example. China, being communist, has made its rapid growth possible by respecting entrepreneurial freedom.Current state totalitarianism can be recognized by the following styles of government:Regulation of education at all three levels, tending to disregard family education, as well as ignoring the legitimate rights of the Church to provide religious education, which is so necessary for all.The imposition of ideologies that facilitate the tyrannical power of the state. We saw this in the COVID-19 pandemic, and we also see it in WOKE globalist ideologies, which go so far as to favor the hormonal and physical massacre of children in the name of a supposed freedom of gender choice.The alliance between the state and the economic elites has catastrophic consequences for citizens. This corrupt and discriminatory game occurs when both seek cooperation for mutual benefit, under the guise of some ideology. And taxpayers foot the bill.