Political representation and social progress: An interpretative approach

Abstract

SUMMARY Many are the explanations given, from the eighteenth century onwards, for ‘European exceptionalism’, the economic growth of modern times which has left the West far richer than the rest of the world. Factors advanced as decisive have included natural resources, cultural values, economic efficiency, and technological progress. Josep Fontana focuses in this article on theories linking Western advances with the consolidation of the modern state. Recent research has rejected claims that absolute monarchy created a truly unitary and strong system of government. Absolute monarchies were instead underpinned by arrangements negotiated with provincial institutions and powerful groups in society. Thus the military and financial capabilities of rulers like Louis XIV were less than those of countries such as the Netherlands and England, which had more strongly developed parliamentary institutions. There, improved communications created a public opinion and a politics of consensus prefiguring modern democracy and national sentiment. Representative governments held the trust of investors and could raise large sums by means of a national debt. In the case of Britain, this development favoured the growth of a modern economy and the military defeat of its rivals, France and Spain. Spain was held back until the nineteenth century by the Bourbon triumph over representative institutions in Catalonia and the other Aragonese kingdoms under Philip V. Above all, political representation favoured economic growth by maintaining a vigorous civil society, whereas civil society was weaker under more hierarchical governments. Not the state, but civil society was the chief motor of change. Josep Fontana argues, moreover, that healthy future development beyond the present day depends on an active civil society to resist the adverse effects of global capitalism on both poorer countries and in developed Western democracies. Hence it is instructive to study the historical development of traditional parliamentary institutions into new forms of representation.