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Towards a historical sociology of constitutional legitimacy

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Abstract

This article has two primary objectives. First, it sets out the methodological argument that the conventional antinomy between normative and sociological approaches to questions of state legitimacy depends on a series of false constructions, and that normative and sociological – or specifically historical–sociological – analyses of states and the processes by which they obtain legitimacy can be (and ought to be) mutually reinforcing. This argument hinges on the claim that historical sociology should renounce some of its common presuppositions regarding the coercive functions of state power and reformulate itself as a normative social science, identifying and promoting models of statehood likely to obtain legitimacy in modern differentiated societies. Second, it sets out the more substantive argument that the legitimization of states can be observed both as an evolutionary or adaptive dimension of state formation and as a process of theoretical self-reflection in which the societies where states are located construct and refine the most adequate form for the transmission of the power they designate as political. In this respect, the article questions common assumptions about politics and legitimacy and makes a case for a change of paradigm in the analysis of these concepts. Through this change of paradigm, politics itself and the methods used for securing legitimacy for politics are constructed as abstracted articulations of a society’s own needs and exigencies. The article borrows elements from the systemic-functionalist sociology of Niklas Luhmann to develop the argument. In this context, the article also uses historical case studies to outline a theory of constitutions and constitutional rights. This theory explains how constitutions and constitutional rights help to generate legitimacy for states by enabling modern political systems, both normatively and functionally, to reflect and stabilize their position in society, to control the volume of politics in a society, and to elaborate socially adequate techniques for applying and restricting political power. The article concludes by suggesting that historical–sociological analyses of the functions of rights and constitutions can provide a key to proposing both normatively and sociologically founded models of legitimate statehood.

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Notes

  1. Luhmann, N. (1970). Soziologie des politischen systems. In Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklärung. Aufsätze zur Theorie sozialer Systeme (pp. 154–177, at 159). Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag.

  2. This is the most interesting point in David Beetham’s work on these questions. See Beetham, D. (1991). The legitimation of power (p. 168). Basingstoke: MacMillan. See also Habermas, J. (1973). Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (pp. 128–130). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

  3. On the relation between fear and legitimacy, see Poggi, G. (2001). Forms of power (pp. 41–42). Cambridge: Polity.

  4. Simmons, A. J. (2001). Justification and legitimacy. Essays on right and obligations (p. 130). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  5. To illustrate this, it is helpful to quote at length from an influential defence of constitutional rule: “Constitutionalism assumes that no exercise of power is legitimate unless predicated upon consent, and that consent is not possible unless informed by reason. Behind those assumptions, indeed, behind any theory of political obligation, must be an irreducible normative position. The normative premise upon which Western constitutionalism’s concern for limited power and public reason rests is the protection of human dignity.” Finn, J.E. (1991). Constitutions in crisis. Political violence and the rule of law (p. 36). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  6. Ingram, A. (1994). A political theory of rights (pp. 184–185). Oxford: Clarendon.

  7. See Kant’s insistence that the state is not a “patrimonium” and must be separated from other sources of power: Kant, I. (1976). Zum Ewigen Frieden (pp. 195–251, at p. 197), in Werkausgabe, edited by W. Weischedel, in 12 volumes, vol. XI. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

  8. Historical-sociological accounts of the state and its legitimacy can be broadly assigned to three different categories. For an excellent summary of this literature, to which my own account is indebted, see: Downing, B.M. (1992). The military revolution and political change. Origins of democracy and autocracy in early modern Europe (pp. 5–9). Princeton: Princeton University Press. First, some historical–sociological theories of the state, influenced by Emile Durkheim, assert that evolutionary modernization is the main dynamic shaping state formation and that modern societies tend to institute forms of statehood that exist in a condition of democratically acceded power. For the early literature in this line, see Lipset, S. M. (1959). Some social requisites of democracy: economic development and political democracy. American Political Science Review, 53(1), 69–105, 85, and Parsons, T. (1964). Evolutionary universals in sociology. American Sociological Review, 29, 339–357. For a programmatic statement of this thesis, see Pye, L. W. (1965). Introduction: Political culture and political development. In L. W. Pye & S. Verba (Eds.), Political culture and political development (pp. 3–26). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Second, some historical–sociological theories of the state assert that states are formed through the convergence of society around the state, and that a modern state establishes, tests, and enforces its legitimacy through strategies of societal control, usually configured as sovereignty. See Weber, M. (1921). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie (pp. 558–559). Tübingen: Mohr; Schumpeter, J. (1976). Die Krise des Steuerstaats. In R. Goldscheid & J. Schumpeter, Die Finanzkrise des Steuerstaats. Beiträge zur politischen Ökonomie der Staatsfinanzen (pp. 329–379). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. More recently in this vein, Charles Tilly asserts that the course of state building was first driven by the military engagements of incipient states, and that states evolved the administrative characteristics of centralized statehood in order to raise revenue to finance their control of military personnel and hardware. See Tilly, C. (1975). Reflections on the history of European state-making. In C. Tilly (Ed.), The formation of national states in Western Europe. (pp. 3–83, at p. 42). Princeton: Princeton University Press. See also Tilly, C. (1990). Coercion, capital and European states AD 990–1992 (p. 74). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Related to this, Michael Mann argues that the modern state is defined through the formation of “infrastructural power”: that is, by centralizing and regularizing its own functions (especially those relating to revenue) and by engendering coordinated predispositions throughout society in order to fulfill tasks that are “necessary” or “indispensable” to a modern society. See Mann, M. (1988). States, war and capitalism. Studies in political sociology (pp. 9, 14). Oxford: Blackwell. See also Genet, J.-P. (1992). Which state rises? Historical Research, 65, 119–133. Third, some historical–sociological theories of the state use a comparative or genealogical concept of political convergence to explain the modern state and its legitimacy. Such theories argue that there are divergent and temporally non-uniform processes of state building and that in different traditional and cultural settings states obtain legitimacy through distinct, either more or less instrumental arrangements. See Moore Jr, B. (1969). Social origins of dictatorship and democracy. Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world (p. 415). Harmondsworth: Penguin. In a similar vein, Brian Downing also claims that the distinct constitutional forms of European states are causally correlated with their fiscal histories, and that states – especially Prussia – that concentrated their administrative functions around the need to raise revenue for large and expensive standing armies tended to experience a very slow progress towards a condition of constitutional balance, with legally guaranteed rights of social autonomy. See Downing, B. (1988). Constitutionalism, warfare, and political change in early modern Europe. Theory and Society, 17, 7–56, 22 and Downing, B. (1992; p. 110). Theda Skocpol contributes to this literature by emphasizing the international situation of a particular country as relevant for the assessment of its political formation and she therefore ascribes a limited autonomy to the state over and against inner-societal relations. See Skocpol, T. (1979). States and social revolutions. A comparative analysis of France, Russia and China (p. 20). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also Ertman, T. (1997). Birth of the Leviathan. Building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe (1–34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  9. Vilfredo Pareto provides an extreme example of this attitude. For his account of legitimacy as the result of an appeal to irrational “derivations” see Pareto, V. (1935). The mind and society. A treatise on general sociology, translated by A. Bongiorno and A. Livingston (pp. 1299–1300). New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Niklas Luhmann provides a still more extreme example of this sociological approach to legitimacy, and he rejects the assumption of the “old European tradition” that the “concept of legitimacy” pertains to the “realm of law.” Luhmann, N. (1981). Selbstlegitimation des Staates (pp. 65–84, at 66). In N. Achterberg & W. Krawietz (Eds.), Legitimation des modernen Staates: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialforschung, Beiheft 15.

  10. This reflects what in a different context Theda Skocpol describes as the “enduring sociological” proclivity to absorb the state into society: Skocpol, T. (1979). State and revolution. Old regimes and revolutionary crises in France, Russia and China’. Theory and Society, 7(1–2), 7–95, 11.

  11. Tilly (1975; p. 38). This is the reason for Tilly’s derision of the “old liberal conception of European history,” which allegedly sees state building as necessarily leading to the incremental enfranchisement of citizens under rights (p. 37).

  12. As an extreme example of this, see Luhmann’s rejection of the normative theories of the Enlightenment as asserting fictitious claims for “consensus, or even truth” as the measure of social reality and so as failing to understand and construct the specifically social nature of their objects. Luhmann, N. (1967). Soziologische Aufklärung. Soziale Welt, 18(2–3), 97–123; 98.

  13. See, for example, Clark, I. (2005). Legitimacy in International Society (pp. 193–194). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  14. Jürgen Habermas has tried to do this from a sociological perspective. The entire earlier work of Jürgen Habermas might be seen as an attempt to combine rationally generalizable concepts of legal validity and factual descriptions of societal evolution and political motivation to inquire into the legitimatory preconditions of modern states. Habermas’s theory of the rationalization of the life-world is designed to show how the expectation that power will have a rationally generalized content is embedded, through language, in social structure and concretely motivating identities. See Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, in 2 volumes: vol. II: Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft (p. 427). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. The problem with Habermas’s work, however, is that it centers on a suppressed but rather crude tautology. He argues that the legitimacy of state power depends upon the existence of rational laws that mediate and generalize discursive agreements among citizens. However, he explains the formation of such laws by presupposing that there exists a generalized predisposition towards moral legislation in all human action and communication, and that human beings will only accept as legitimate power reflecting those generalized legislative capacities, which all people possess. The existence of the human being as a rational-communicative agent is thus both the prior source and invariable guarantor of socially evolved political legitimacy. Habermas, J. (1992). Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats (p. 598). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Rather than producing a sociology of state legitimacy, therefore, Habermas might be seen to propose a moral anthropology of the state, which distills the preconditions of legitimacy from a relatively ahistorical account of the rational structure of human action. Some other very recent literature has also attempted, in different ways, to overcome the antinomy between normative and historical-sociological analysis of state legitimacy and has proposed a contextual approach to examining constitutional norms. For an engaging extension of Habermas’ approach, see Brunkhorst, H. (2002). Solidarität. Von der Bürgerfreundschaft zur globalen Rechtsgenossenschaft (pp. 113–139). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. For an attempt to use a contextual method to illuminate the fabric of constitutional norms, see Scheppele, K. L. (2004) Constitutional ethnography: An introduction. Law & Society Review, 38(3), pp. 389–406, at p. 401. Scheppele’s contextual approach to constitutional discourse is certainly methodologically innovative, but it is badly let down by occasional breath-taking factual inaccuracies.

  15. Simmons (2001, p. 133).

  16. Poggi, G. (1978). The development of the modern state. A sociological introduction (p. 148). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  17. My account of the political system, and of its emergence through a process of social differentiation, refers expressly to the political sociology of Niklas Luhmann, although my argument deviates substantially from his analysis of socio-historical formation. On Luhmann’s view of the differentiation of a particular system for communicating about society’s politics, see Luhmann. N. (1984). Staat und Politik. Zur Semantik der Selbstbeschreibung politischer Systeme. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Sonderheft 15: Politische Theoriengeschichte. Probleme einer Teildisziplin der Politischen Wissenschaft, 99–125, 102.

  18. This is normally seen as the function of Roman law, and especially its lex regia. The crucial importance of Roman law in this process is that it enabled the application of law across different factual settings in accordance with generalizable and contextually indifferent juristic categories. See Radding, C. M. (1988). The origins of medieval jurisprudence. Pavia and Bologna 850–1150 (p. 29). New Haven: Yale University Press. For historical accounts of the role of Roman law in underscoring proto-modern regimes, see Kallen, G. (1938). Friedrich Barbarossas Verfassungsreform und das Landrecht des Sachsenspiegels. Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, 58, pp. 560–583, at 566. In a similar voice, see Struve, T. (1999). Die Salier und das römische Recht. Aufsätze zur Entwicklung einer säkularen Herrschaftstheorie in der Zeit des Investiturstreites (p. 58). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner; Pennington, K. (1993). The prince and the law, 1200–1600. Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (p. 12). Berkeley: University of California Press; Moraw, P. (1987). Königliche Herrschaft und Verwaltung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (ca. 1350–1450). In R. Schneider (Ed.), Das spätmittelalterliche Königtum im europäischen Vergleich (pp. 185–200, at p. 190. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke.); Post, G. (1953). Plena potestas and consent in medieval assemblies. A study in Romano-Canonical procedure and the rise of representation 1150–1325. Traditio, I, 355–408; Abulafia, D. (1992). Frederick II. A Medieval Emperor (pp. 33, 35). London: Pimlico.; Wyduckel, D. (1979). Princeps Legibus Solutus. Eine Untersuchung zur frühmodernen Rechts- und Staatslehre (p. 38). Berlin: Duncker und Humblot. Wyduckel argues that the lex regia began to influence the structure of state authority earlier than is usually claimed (p. 42). Also important on this is: Krause, H. (1952). Kaiserrecht und Rezeption (pp. 26, 31). Heidelberg: Carl Winter. For a dissenting perspective on the politically consolidatory function of Roman law, see Appelt, H. (1988). Friedrich Barbarossa und das Römische Recht. (In H. Appelt (Ed.), Kaisertum, Königtum, Landesherrschaft. Gesammelte Studien zur mittelalterlichen Verfassungsgeschichte (pp. 61–80, at p. 67). Vienna: Böhlau.). On the introduction of Roman law in the Italian republics, see for example Storchi, C. S. (1984), Diritto e Istituzioni a Bergamo. Dal Comune alla Signoria (pp. 337–411). Milan: Giuffrè. On the additional role of Roman law in reinforcing papal power within the church, see: Buisson, L. (1958). Potestas und Caritas. Die päbstliche Gewalt im Spätmittelalter (p. 74). Cologne: Böhlau. For the classical account of these processes in English, see Berman, H. J. (1983). Law and revolution. The formation of the western legal tradition (p. 113). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Early English law did not use principles of Roman law in the same way as other countries, and English law primarily depended for its legitimacy on the evocation of custom and the consent of an oligarchical political society. See the resultant critique of Roman law in Fortescue, J. (1942). De Laudibus Legum Anglie, edited and translated by S. B. Chrimes (p.25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  19. See note 8 above.

  20. For a tiny sample of the vast literature on bureaucracy and centralization in early state building, see: van Creveld, M. (1999). The rise and decline of the state (p. 128). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Strayer, S. (1970). On the medieval origins of the modern state (p. 9). Princeton: Princeton University Press; Reynolds, S. (1997). Kingdoms and communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edition (p. 39). Oxford: Clarendon.

  21. For a brilliantly evocative account of the intensely localized patrimonial structure of pre-modern law, see Schumann, R. (1973). Authority and the commune, Parma 833–1133 (p. 68). Parma: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province Parmensi. On the process of legal generalization in different national settings, see Harding, A. (2002). Medieval law and the foundations of the state (p. 33) Oxford: Oxford University Press. On the early enforcement of uniform penal codes to prevent private judgements and self-help acting as sources of law, see Klingelhöfer, E. (1955). Die Reichsgesetze von 1220, 1231/32 und 1235. Ihr Werden und ihre Wirkung im deutschen Staat Friedrichs II (p. 221). Weimar: Hermann Böhlau; Kaeuper, R. W. (1988). War, justice, and public order. England and France in the Later Middle Ages (p. 145). Oxford: Clarendon; Harding (2002; pp. 69–108). On the interlinkage between the dislocation of state power from the church and its dislocation from locality and custom, see Hudson, J. (1994). Land, law, and lordship in Anglo-Norman England (p. 265). Oxford: Clarendon. Still noteworthy on this is Mitteis, H. (1944). Der Staat des hohen Mittelalters. Grundlinien einer vergleichenden Verfassungsgeschichte des Lehnzeitalters (p. 304). Weimar: Böhlau. Very illuminating on differences between early-feudal and late-feudal law is Mayer, T. (1956). Die Ausbildung der Grundlagen des modernen deutschen Staates im hohen Mittelalter. In H. Kämpf (Ed.), Herrschaft und Staat im Mittelalter (pp. 284–331, at pp. 310–311). Darmstadt: Gentner.

  22. On this process in the English context, see the still excellent book: McIlwain, C. H. (1910). The high court of parliament and its supremacy. An historical essay on the boundaries between legislation and adjudication in England (pp. 42, 44, 356). New Haven: Yale University Press. For the increasing use of statutes in different eras of English history, see Keeton, G. W. (1966). The norman conquest and the common law (pp. 76, 78, 204). London: Ernest Benn; Plucknett, T. F. T. (1949). Legislation of Edward I (pp. 10–5). Oxford: Clarendon; Chrimes, S. B. (1936). English constitutional ideas in the fifteenth century (pp. 252, 302). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Cromartie, A. (2006). The constitutionalist revolution. An essay on the history of England, 1450–1642 (p. 12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  23. Harding (2002; pp. 191, 254).

  24. Quentin Skinner has something similar to say about the relation between legitimacy and the autonomy of the political. See Skinner, Q. (2002). Visions of Politics, in 3 volumes, vol. II: Renaissance Virtues (pp. 368–413). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  25. Hobbes, T. (1914). Leviathan (p. 140). London: J.M. Dent.

  26. Pufendorf, S. (1997). De jure naturae et gentium (p. 30), in Gesammelte Werke, edited by W. Schmidt-Biggemann, planned for 9 volumes, vol. IV. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

  27. See Stichweh, R. (1991). Der frühmoderne Staat und die europäische Universität. Zur Interaktion von Politik und Erziehungssystem im Prozeß ihrer Ausdifferenzierung (16.-18. Jahrhundert) (p. 82). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

  28. This seems to be the impetus behind the early definition of the state as a legal person or moral person. For an example of this, see Wolff, C. (1754). Grundsätze des Natur- und Völckerrechts (p. 47). Halle: Renger. In most European states, notably, this definition was derived from the idea of the legal person under Roman law, a uniquely flexible and iterable instrument for positivizing the foundations of both civil law and state power. See, for example, Schmalz, T. (1801). Handbuch des römischen Privatrechts. Für Vorlesungen über Justinianische Institutionen, 2nd edition. Königsberg: F. Nicolovius.

  29. Here again I refer to Luhmann’s work on these questions and processes. See Luhmann, N. (1965). Grundrechte als Institution. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Soziologie (p. 135). Berlin: Duncker und Humblot. See also Teubner, G. (2005). Societal constitutionalism: Alternatives to state-centred constitutional theory? In C. Joerges I.-J. Sand, & G. Teubner (Eds.), Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism (pp. 3–28, at 12–13). Oxford: Hart.

  30. The locus classicus for this view, in a critical formulation, is Hegel, G.W.F. (1969). Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, in Werke, edited by E. Moldenhauer & K.M. Michel, in 20 volumes: vol. VII (pp. 339–382). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. For a deeply influential – though still critical – more recent examination of this process, see Koselleck, R. (1959). Kritik und Krise. Ein Beitrag zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt. Freiburg: Alber. For other more sympathetic accounts of this process across different national variations, see Habermas, J. (1990). Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (pp. 122–160). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp; Grimm, D. (1987). Recht und Staat der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (esp. pp. 192–211). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

  31. See Ishay, M. R. (2004). The history of human rights. From ancient times to the globalization era (pp. 65–69). Berkeley: University of California Press; Eley, G. (2002). Forging democracy. The history of the left in Europe, 1850–2000 (pp. 62–85). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Arato, A. (2000). Civil society, constitution, and legitimacy (p. 71). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

  32. Barker, R. (1990). Political legitimacy and the state (p. 199). Oxford: Clarendon.

  33. Note my opposition to Koselleck’s view that the rights claims of the Enlightenment developed metaphysical ideas to assert a “claim to domination” over the state, and that in so doing they undermined the positive foundations of statehood that had emerged through the period of absolutism: Koselleck, R. (1959; p. 101).

  34. Luhmann sets out a similar, though not identical, argument. See Luhmann, N. (1973). Politische Verfassungen im Kontext des Gesellschaftssystems I. Der Staat, 12(1), 1–22, 6.

  35. On the features and emergence of the “fiscal state,” see Schulze, W. (1995). The emergence and consolidation of the “tax state.” I: The sixteenth century. In R. Bonney (Ed.), Economic systems and state finance (pp. 261–280, at p. 276). Oxford: Clarendon. See also Bonney, R. & Ormrod, W.M. (1999). Crises, revolutions and self-sustained growth: Towards a conceptual model of change in fiscal history. In W. M. Ormrod et al. (Eds.), Crises, revolutions and self-sustained growth. Essays in European fiscal history, 1130–1830 (pp. 1–21, at p. 2). Stamford: Tyas.) For an excellent account of the beginnings of a centralized fiscal system in England, see Harriss, G. L. (1975). King, parliament, and public finance in medieval England to 1369 (pp. 3, 4, 14, 21). Oxford: Clarendon; for a discussion of the initial emergence of “modern taxes,” as distinct from feudal levies, and of the impact of these taxes on the administrative structure of the state, see Mitchell, S. M. (1914). Studies in taxation under John and Henry III (pp. 351–352). New Haven: Yale University Press. For commentary on parallel, though slightly later processes in France, see Henneman, J. B. (1971). Royal taxation in fourteenth-century France. The development of war financing 1322–1356 (pp. 303, 307, 329). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  36. O’Brien P. & Hunt, P. (1999). Excises and the rise of a fiscal state in England, 1586–1688. In Ormrod, W. M. et al. (Eds.), Crises, revolutions and self-sustained growth. Essays in European fiscal history, 1130–1830 (pp. 198–223, at p. 199). Stamford: Tyas. This article calculates that in the period between 1,500 and 1,700 public revenues in England were increased by a factor of 4.4. See also Braddick, M. J. (1996). The nerves of state. Taxation and the financing of the English state, 1558–1714 (p. 29). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

  37. Collins, J. B. (1988). Fiscal limits of absolutism. Direct taxation in early seventeenth-century France (p. 45). Berkeley: University of California Press; Bonney, R. (1978). Political change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin 1624–1661. (p. 214). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Major, J. R. (1980). Representative government in early modern France (p. 671). New Haven: Yale University Press.

  38. In addition to the above, see also Levi, M. (1988). Of rule and revenue (p. 138). Berkeley: University of California Press.

  39. Sacks, D. H. (1994). The paradox of taxation: Fiscal crises, parliament, and liberty in England, 1450–1640. In P. T. Hoffman & K. Norberg (Eds.), Fiscal crises and representative government, 1450–1789 (pp. 7–66, at pp. 55–56). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press); see also Cust, R. (1987). The forced loan and English politics, 1626–1628 (p. 319). Oxford: Clarendon.

  40. See Dietz, F. C. (1964). English public finance, 1558–1641 (p. 127). Frank Cass.; Ashton, R. (1960). The crown and the money market, 1603–1640 (p. 45). Oxford: Clarendon; Chandaman, C. D. (1975). The English public revenue 1660–1688 (p. 261). Oxford: Clarendon.

  41. See Cromartie (2001; p. 201); Brewer, J. (1989). The sinews of power. War, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (p. 21). London: Unwin. Importantly, crucial elements of the taxation system of the restoration period were introduced during the interregnum; they were thus legitimized by popular approval and subsequently retained as expedient. See Tanner, J. R. (1960). English constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century 1603–1689 (p. 125). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Ashley, M. (1962). Financial and commercial policy under the Cromwellian protectorate (p. 83). London: Frank Cass. On the controversies over divided sovereignty, see Comstock Weston, C. & J. Renfrow Greenberg, (1981). Subjects and sovereigns. The grand controversy over legal sovereignty in Stuart England (p. 57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  42. See Locke, J. (1960). Two treatises of government (p. 367). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  43. See Foley, M. (1999). The politics of the British constitution (p. 18). Manchester: Manchester University Press; McIlwain, C. H. (1947). Constitutionalism ancient and modern (p. 95). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.; Dickinson, H. T. (1977). Liberty and property. Political ideology in eighteenth-century Britain (p. 59). New York: Holmes and Meier.; Hart, J. S. (2003). The rule of law 1603–1660. Crowns, courts and judges (p. 227). Harlow: Longman.; Comstock Weston, C. & J. Renfrow Greenberg. (1981; pp. 1–7, 222, 246, 249).

  44. Brewer (1989; p. 89); for a different emphasis on this, see Dickson, P. G. M. (1967). The financial revolution in England. A study in the development of public credit, 1688–1765 (p. 245). London: Macmillan.; additionally, see O’Brien, P. and P. Hunt, (1999). England, 1485–1815. In R. Bonney (Ed.), The rise of the fiscal state in Europe, c. 1200–1815 (pp. 53–100, at p. 88). Oxford: Oxford University Press.).

  45. Braddick (1996; p. 199).

  46. See Carruthers, B. G. (1996). City of capital. Politics and markets in the English financial revolution (p. 119). Princeton: Princeton University Press. See also North, D. C. & B.R. Weingast, (1989). Constitutions and commitment: The evolution of institutions governing public choice in seventeenth-century England. The Journal of Economic History, 44, 803–832, 805, 817, 819. North and Weingast argue that the constitution of England arose from a particular “bargaining context” (p. 806) between rulers and ruled. Once instituted, as it granted independence to the judiciary and fiscal authority to parliament it greatly strengthened the financial position of the state. Crucially, it also contributed to the emergence of independent banks (which allowed the state to borrow more money and further reinforced its power), and so promoted the growth of capitalism more generally and the resultant further expansion of public finance.

  47. Carruthers (1996; p. 108); Bien, D. D. (1994). Old regime origins of democratic liberty. In D. V. Kley (Ed.), The French idea of freedom. The old regime and the declaration of rights of 1789 (pp. 23–71). Stanford: Stanford University Press. For earlier documentation of extreme royal debt and inefficient taxation laws in France, see Bonney, R. (1981). The king’s debts. Finance and politics in France 1589–1661 (p. 198). Oxford: Clarendon.

  48. See Stone, B. (1994). The genesis of the French revolution: A global–historical interpretation (p. 39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; see also Riley, J. C. (1986). The seven years war and the old regime in France. The economic and financial toll (p. 208). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  49. For samples of the literature on this, see Hamscher, A. N. (1976). The parlement of Paris after the Fronde 1653–1673 (p. 119). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press; Hurt, J.J. (2002). Louis XIV and the parlements. The assertion of royal authority (pp. 149–172). Manchester: Manchester University Press; Doyle, W. (1995). Officers, nobles and revolutionaries. Essays on eighteenth-century France (pp. 1–48). London: Hambledon.

  50. For selected literature on this pre-history of the 1789 revolution, see Egret, J. (1977). The French prerevolution 1787–1788, translated by W. Camp (p. 147). Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Shennan, J. H. (1998). The parlement of Paris (pp. 318–323). Stroud: Sutton; Marion, M. (1914). Histoire financière de la France depuis 1715, in 5 volumes, vol. I (pp. 258–259). Paris: Rousseau.

  51. Doyle, W. (1996). Venality. The sale of offices in eighteenth-century France (pp. 5, 66, 78). Oxford: Clarendon; see also Bluche, F. (1980). Le rôle des offices dans la mobilité sociale des familles du Parlement de Paris. In K. Malettke (Ed.), Ämterkäuflichkeit: Aspekte sozialer Mobilität im Europäischen Vergleich (17. und 18. Jahrhundert) (pp. 69–76). Berlin: Colloquium.).

  52. See the seminal study on this Dent, J. (1973). Crisis in Finance: Crown, financiers and society in seventeenth-century France (p. 28). Newton Abbot: David & Charles.

  53. Stone, B. (1986). The French parlements and the crisis of the old regime (p. 76). Chapel Hill/London: The University of North Carolina Press.

  54. Fitzsimmons, M. P. (1994). The remaking of France. The national assembly and the constitution of 1791 (p. 12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  55. For sample commentary, see Kwass, M. (2000). Privilege and the politics of taxation in eighteenth-century France: Liberté, Egalité, Fiscalité (p. 170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Jones, P. M. (1995). Reform and revolution in France. The politics of transition, 1774–1791 (p. 156). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Marion (1914; p. 445).

  56. Kwass (2000; p. 1).

  57. Jones (1995; p. 7).

  58. Bosher, J. F. (1970), French finances 1770–1795. From business to bureaucracy (pp. 232, 295). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  59. For important commentaries on Sieyès, see: Pasquino, P. (1998). Sieyès et l’invention de la constitution en France (p. 14). Paris: Editions Odile Jacob; Forsyth, M. (1987). Reason and revolution. The political thought of the Abbé Sieyès (p. 80). Leicester: Leicester University Press.

  60. On this, see Root, H. L. (1994). The fountain of privilege. Political foundations of markets in old regime France and England (p. 5). Berkeley: University of California Press.

  61. The corps of office-holders, sustained and given dignity by their proximity to the king and the court, was still supplying about 33 percent of loans to the king in the 1780s. See Bien, D. D. (1987). Offices, corps, and a system of state credit: The uses of privilege under the ancient regime. In K. M. Baker (Ed.), The French revolution and the creation of modern political culture, in 4 volumes, vol. I: The political culture of the old regime (pp. 89–114, at p. 111). Oxford: Pergamon. For samples of the vast literature on the thwarted attempts at economic liberalization in France before 1789, and especially on the impetus towards liberalization in the physiocratic economic doctrines of the mid-eighteenth century, see Kaplan, S. L. (1976). Bread, politics and political economy in the reign of Louis XV, in 2 volumes, vol. I (p. 113). The Hague: Nijhoff; Weulersse, G. (1959). La Physiocratie á la fin du Règne de Louis XV (1770–1774) (p. 80). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; Weulersse, G. (1950). La Physiocratie sous les ministères de Turgot et de Necker (1774–1781) (p. 104). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France; Fox-Genovese, E. (1976). The origins of physiocracy. Economic revolution and social order in eighteenth-century France (p. 49). Ithaca: Cornell University Press; Vaggi, G. (1987). The economics of Francois Quesnay (p. 38). Basingstoke: Macmillan; Roche, D. (1993). La France des Lumières (p. 142). Paris: Fayard. See also Creveld (1999; p. 151). Creveld argues of the pre-1789 French state that its fiscal resources were chronically limited by the lack of mechanisms for consensual decision-making. For a similar argument, see Norberg, K. (1994). The French fiscal crisis of 1788 and the financial origins of the revolution of 1789. In P.T. Hoffman & K. Norberg (Eds.), Fiscal crises and representative government, 1450–1789 (pp. 253–298, at p. 296). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  62. See Boldt, H. (1972). Zum Strukturwandel des Ausnahmezustandes im 1. Weltkrieg. In E.-W. Böckenförde (Ed.), Moderne deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (1815–1918) (pp. 323–337). Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

  63. This tendency was especially pronounced in Germany, but it was not a uniquely German phenomenon. On Germany, see Kocka, J. (1973). Klassengesellschaft im Krieg. Deutsche Sozialgeschichte 1914–1918. (p. 24). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht; Feldman, G. D. & I. Steinisch (1985). Industrie und Gewerkschaften 1918–1924. Die überforderte Zentralarbeitsgemeinschaft (pp. 19–20). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsantalt; Feldman, G. D. (1966). Army, industry and labor in Germany 1914–1918 (p. 120). Princeton: Princeton University Press; Petzina, D. (1985). Soziale und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung. In K. A. Jeserich et al. (Eds.), Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte, in 5 volumes: vol. IV: Das Reich als Republik und in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (pp. 39–66, at p. 60). Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.; Nipperdey, T. (1979). Organisierter Kapitalismus, Verbände und die Krise des Kaiserreichs: Literaturbericht. Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 5, 418–433, 419. On other countries, see Middlemas, K. (1979). Politics in industrial society. The experience of the British system since 1911 (p. 151). London: Deutsch; Sarti, R. (1971). Fascism and Industrial Leadership in Italy, 1919–1940. A study in the expansion of private power under fascism (p. 10). Berkeley: University of California Press; Adler, F. H. (1995). Italian industrialists from liberalism to fascism. The political development of the industrial bourgeoisie, 1906–1934 (p. 90). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  64. These tendencies were again perhaps most manifest in Germany, although, to differing degrees, they characterize all European states of this period. For historical commentary on the situation in Germany, see Varain, H. J. (1956). Freie Gewerkschaften, Sozialdemokratie und Staat. Die Politik der Generalkommission unter der Führung Carl Legiens (1890–1920) (pp. 151–152). Düsseldorf: Droste; Nocken, U. (1978). Corporatism and pluralism in modern German history. In D. Stegmann, B.-J. Wendt & P.-C. Witt (Eds.), Industrielle Gesellschaft und politisches System. Beiträge zur politischen Sozialgeschichte. Festschrift für Fritz Fischer zum siebzigsten Geburtstag (pp. 37–56, at pp. 46–47). Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft. On the effect of this on the process of constitutional formation in 1918–1919, see Portner, E. (1973). Die Verfassungspolitik der Liberalen 1919. Ein Beitrag zur Deutung der Weimarer Reichsverfassung (p. 194). Bonn: Röhrscheid; Völtzer, F. (1992). Der Sozialstaatsgedanke in der Weimarer Reichsverfassung (p. 148). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

  65. This was primarily instituted through a transformation of labor law, as a result of which labor law was ascribed quasi-constitutional status and re-defined as a means of effecting statutory compacts between various social organizations. For contemporary accounts of the altered status of labor law, see Sinzheimer, H. (1916). Ein Arbeitstarifgesetz. Die Idee der sozialen Selbstbestimmung im Recht. Munich: Duncker und Humblot. Sinzheimer was responsible for drafting the labor-law provisions in the German constitution of 1919, and he argued that labor law ought to function as a device for unifying elements of private and elements of public law in order to formalize wide-ranging social agreements between otherwise pluralistic and antagonistic classes and social groups (49). Additionally, see Kahn-Freund, O. (1932). Der Funktionswandel des Arbeitsrechts. Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 67, 146–174, and Potthoff, H. (1925). Die Einwirkung der Reichsverfassung auf das Arbeitsrecht (p. 14). Leipzig: Deichert. For historical commentary on these issues, see Ramm, T. (1980). Die Arbeitsverfassung der Weimarer Republik. In F. Gamillscheg et al. (Eds.), In memoriam Sir Otto Kahn Freund (pp. 225–246, at p. 226). Munich: Beck.) This expanded function of labor law ultimately moved beyond Germany and permeated the founding ideals of the constitution of the Second Republic in Spain in 1931. This is evident above all in Article 46 of the Spanish constitution. On the migration of labor law from Berlin to Madrid in the early 1930s, see Posada, A (1932). La Nouvelle Constitution Espagnole. Le Régime Constitutionnel en Espagne (p. 155). Paris: Sirey.

  66. For the general European picture, see Feinstein, C. H., Temin P. & Toniolo, G. (1997). The European economy between the wars (pp. 18–37). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Maier, C. (1975). Recasting Bourgeois Europe. Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I. Princeton: Princeton University Press. For individual countries, see, for example Forsyth, D. J. (1993). The crisis of liberal Italy. Monetary and financial policy, 1914–1922 (p. 101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Feldman, G. D. (1997). The great disorder. politics, economics and society in the German inflation 1914–1924 (pp. 25–98). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  67. For samples of the literature on Germany, the state most badly affected by this phenomenon, see Böhret, C. (1966). Aktionen gegen die ‘kalte Sozialisierung’ 1926–1930. Zum Wirken ökonomischer Einflußverbände in der Weimarer Republik (pp. 104, 109, 125). Berlin: Duncker und Humblot; Grübler, M. (1982). Die Spitzenverbände der Wirtschaft und das erste Kabinett Brüning: Vom Ende der Großen Koalition1929/30 bis zum Vorabend der Bankenkrise 1931 (p. 189). Düsseldorf: Droste; Meister, R. (1991). Die große Depression. Zwangslagen und Handlungsspielräume der Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik in Deutschland 1929–1932 (p. 248). Regensburg: Transfer Verlag; Weisbrod, B. (1978). Schwerindustrie in der Weimarer Republik. Interessenpolitik zwischen Stabilisierung und Krise (pp. 243–244). Wuppertal: Peter Hammer.

  68. On the more general transformation of the democratic constitution under Mussolini, see Palla, M. (2000). Lo Stato Fascista (p. 83). Florence: La Nuova Italia; Gentile, E. (1995). La via italiana al totalitarismo. Il partito e lo stato nel regime fascista (p. 203). Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica.

  69. Panunzio, S. (1933). Rivoluzione e Costituzione (Problemi costituzionali della Rivoluzione) (pp. 31–2). Milan: Fratelli Treves. On the emergence of authoritarian syndicalism in Italy, see Adler (1995; p. 82); and Roberts, D. D. (1979). The syndicalist tradition and Italian fascism (p. 243). Manchester: Manchester University Press. For similar theories, see Gentile, G. (1929). Origini e Dottrina del Fascismo (p. 50). Rome: Libreria del Littorio.

  70. Rocco, A. (2005). Discorsi Parlamentari (p. 218). Bologna: Mulino.

  71. Panunzio (1933; p. 75).

  72. Huber, E. R. (1935). Neue Grundbegriffe des hoheitlichen Rechts (p. 19). Berlin: Duncker und Dünnhaupt.

  73. Larenz, K. (1935). Rechtsperson und subjektives Recht. Zur Wandlung der Rechtsbegriffe (p. 21). Berlin: Juncker und Dünnhaupt.

  74. Freisler, R. (1936). Richter und Gesetz (pp. 8, 11). Berlin: Spaeth und Linde.

  75. After the Nuremberg laws of 1935 Hitler’s regime instituted a two-tier system of citizenship, in which some “racial” groups were excluded from all effective legal entitlement. See Burleigh M. & Wippermann, W. (1991). The racial state: Germany 1933–1945 (p. 44). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For recent literature on race laws under Mussolini, see De Grand, A. (2004). Mussolini’s follies: Fascism in its Imperial and Racist Phase. Contemporary European history, 13(2), 127–147; Gillette, A. (2001). The origins of the “Manifesto of Racial Scientists.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 6(3), 305–323.

  76. This is Tim Mason’s famous argument. See Mason, T. W. (1993). Social policy in the third Reich. The working class and the ‘national community’ (p. 107). Oxford: Berg.

  77. This is the underlying theme in the classic, and still unsurpassed, work on the NSDAP: Neumann, F. (1944). Behemoth. The structure and practice of national socialism 1933–1944 (New York: Harper and Row; see also Mason, T. (1995). Nazism, fascism and the working class (p. 102). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Carr, W. (1972). Arms, autarky and aggression. A study in German foreign policy 1933–1939 (p. 61). London: Arnold. For a view of the Hitler regime that questions the existence of a consolidated relation between executive and business, see Hayes, P. (1987). Industry and ideology. IG Farben in the Nazi era (p. 120). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Acknowledgments

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Gianfranco Poggi for his great theoretical generosity in corresponding with me extensively about the claims of this article, even though my arguments at times diverge sharply from his views on the main topics of discussion. Additionally, I thank members of the HINT group in the Politics Department at the University of Glasgow (and especially my colleague Chris Berry) for reading a much earlier draft of the article and for engaging me in critical debate concerning its implications. I would like to thank Samantha Ashenden, Jean Clam, Cécile Fabre, Steven Greer, Michael Rask Madsen, Francisco Ramirez, Inger-Johanne Sand, Darrow Schecter, and Gert Verschraegen for, in various contexts, discussing and at times polemically disagreeing with me about some of the ideas underlying the article. I also thank the readers and Editors of Theory and Society for their very helpful critical observations and demands for clarification.

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Thornhill, C. Towards a historical sociology of constitutional legitimacy. Theor Soc 37, 161–197 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9048-7

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