Why did Hobbes think divided sovereignty could lead back to the state of nature?

Thomas Hobbes argued that sovereignty must be absolute and undivided because the primary purpose of the social contract is to maintain peace and prevent a return to the state of nature.12

In Hobbes’s view, the state of nature is a condition of "war of all against all," where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" due to the absence of a common power to enforce agreements. To escape this, individuals collectively delegate their right of self-government to a sovereign, whose authority is the only mechanism capable of enforcing laws and keeping the peace.134

Hobbes believed that any division of sovereign power—whether between branches of government, between church and state, or through the multiplication of legal interpreters—destroys the unity of the sovereign. By fragmenting this power, the state loses its ability to effectively punish those who breach the contract or to resolve conflicts definitively. Consequently, a divided government becomes functionally paralyzed, leading to the collapse of civil order and returning members of the commonwealth to the chaotic, violent conditions of the state of nature.241