<P> During the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of sovereignty gained both legal and moral force as the main Western description of the meaning and power of a State . In particular, the "Social contract" as a mechanism for establishing sovereignty was suggested and, by 1800, widely accepted, especially in the new United States and France, though also in Great Britain to a lesser extent . </P> <P> Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (1651) arrived a conception of sovereignty similar to Bodin's, which had just achieved legal status in the "Peace of Westphalia", but for different reasons . He created the first modern version of the social contract (or contractarian) theory, arguing that to overcome the "nasty, brutish and short" quality of life without the cooperation of other human beings, people must join in a "commonwealth" and submit to a "Soveraigne (sic) Power" that is able to compel them to act in the common good . This expediency argument attracted many of the early proponents of sovereignty . Hobbes strengthened the definition of sovereignty beyond either Westphalian or Bodin's, by saying that it must be: </P> <Ul> <Li> Absolute: because conditions could only be imposed on a sovereign if there were some outside arbitrator to determine when he had violated them, in which case the sovereign would not be the final authority . </Li> <Li> Indivisible: The sovereign is the only final authority in his territory; he does not share final authority with any other entity . Hobbes held this to be true because otherwise there would be no way of resolving a disagreement between the multiple authorities . </Li> </Ul> <Li> Absolute: because conditions could only be imposed on a sovereign if there were some outside arbitrator to determine when he had violated them, in which case the sovereign would not be the final authority . </Li>

Who said sovereignty is the supreme will of the state