The relationship between state and people is always problematic. Some think of it as a covenant with insoluble problems within and without its embrace: who ultimately rules whom?Starting with Thomas Hobbes, whose 1651 magnum opus, Leviathan conceptualised the state as the biblical sea monster, David Runciman goes on to examine how philosophers have understood the relationship of citizens and the governors who rule them.From Wollstonecraft to MacKinnon and Marx to Fukuyama, Runciman reveals how theorists have bolstered and critiqued the state in the four centuries since Leviathan was first published. He shows how its ideas underpinned seismic events such as the American revolution, radical movements such as second-wave feminism, and seminal texts such as the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, Hind Sawaraj by Ghandi and Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville.Based on the acclaimed History of Ideas podcast, this engaging and original work unpacks twelve thinkers who define political thought today.