Abstract
"Imagination governs the world? said Napoleon Bonaparte three centuries ago. It may however, be difficult in today's world, to affirm who governs the world. Mankind has always been governed by numerous models. Thus, the Greeks invented democracy and were governed by the "demos", the Middle Ages consecrated the government of one person- the king, the following centuries saw the coming into power of the bourgeoisie, and that the last century saw the birth of the "modern" Welfare State. Through these changes, the state remains our reference to define power. The state is an entity that we are sometimes afraid like the Leviathan of Hobbes, but that we consider almost an autonomous entity nowadays. Indeed, the state has "the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order" (Weber, 1921/1978: 54). However it must be remembered that the world has considerably changed and is still changing.
