Etienne de la Boetie

de la Boetie, Etienne, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

Frequently cited in discussions of the ‘consent’ theory of power. The accuracy of this ‘Gandhian paradigm’ of Boetie has been questioned (see Michael Randle, Civil Resistance (A. 1.b. Strategic Theory, Dynamics, Methods and Movements) , p. 31), but Boetie has been used in the past by religious dissidents and from the 20th century by exponents of unarmed resistance. For discussion of his Renaissance context, (see Roland Bleiker, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (A. 1.a.ii. Theories of Civil Disobedience, Power and Revolution) pp. 51-73).