Infrastructure and sovereignity: ¿Leviathan vs Behemoth again?

Abstract

What is the relevance of Hobbes' works regarding contemporary challenges to the State posed by the privatization of infrastructure and logistics? To answer this question, in the first section we review Chapter XXIV of Leviathan and we discuss the "nutrition" of the Republic as a form of sovereign management of material infrastructures and logistics necessary to attain the salus populi. In the second section, we propose a brief review of the emergence of critical infrastructure, from ports and roads to digital platforms, linking its evolution to the development of modern states. The third section presents two contemporary cases of state withdrawal or absence in relation to the administration of critical infrastructe: drug trafficking and private drainage services, and how these cases enable forms of criminal or ground-root quasi-sovereignty, as well as forms of parasitic infrastructure and logistics. These cases are compared with the growing relevance of private digital platforms in contemporary social life. In the fourth section, we present three infrastructural threats: social dependence on platforms, the privatization of knowledge about the population, and the inherent fragility of interdependent infrastructures. The conclusions argue for the urgent need to rethink the ties between sovereignty and infrastructure in the context of the privatization of essential services. Drawing on Hobbes, the article argues for the need to recongifure state power as ultmately responsible for an expanded form of salus populi.