Origins Of Sovereignty Research Articles

Making of the Science of Public Law in Europe

In contrast to the approaches widely accepted in historiography, in this article the author analyses the content of the concepts of “natural law”, “contract” and “sovereignty” developed by representatives of the “school of natural law” (Grotius, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Barbeyrac), as well as their followers (Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau). After Grotius, the individualistic concept of “natural law” emerges in the writings of Pufendorf, which led the representatives of the “school” to look for the form of the social contract in the private legal agreements of the people with the bearer of sovereign power. The author demonstrates that Rousseau, developing his criticism of these ideas, created a new concept of a public law contract in which the “sovereign” is not a party to the agreement, and the people do not alienate supreme power in his favour, remaining its bearer and its only source. At the same time, he did not raise the question of the real “origins of sovereignty”, which the representatives of the “school’ and their followers focused a lot of attention on, since Rousseau's social contract is not a historical fact. Thus, the formation of the science of public law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reflects the transition from the concepts of “natural law”, “contract” and “sovereignty” based on fact to the concepts based on law.

McTague, John. Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743.

McTague, John. <i>Things That Didn’t Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678–1743</i>.

Origin of Sovereignty and Boundaries of Royal Prerogative in Tory Political Controversy in Great Britain in Last Third of 18&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Century

The discourse on the nature and boundaries of royal sovereignty, which unfolded with the coming to power of George III in Great Britain, is considered. The key features and changes in the constitutional views of the Tories that took shape in the 60—90s of the 18th century are examined in the article. The relevance of the study lies in determining the nature and role of the discourse under study in the formation of a new Tory identity, concentrating on the integral role of the monarch. The novelty of the research lies in the emphasis on the religious component of this discourse, as well as in the use of church sermons as a special kind of source. At the same time, some excerpts of sermons are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. It is emphasized that during the period under study, the Tory party did not have a political ideology, and the current policy was influenced by fears about the stability of the English constitution associated with the events in the North American colonies. The validity of the cautious approaches of the supporters of the critical direction in modern British historiography to the assessment of Tory identity in the last third of the 18th century is shown. The author’s assessment of how Toryism of the 60—90s of the 18th century reinterprets the experience of the “old Tories”, combining traditional respect for the royal prerogative with the recognition of the rights and privileges of parliament.

SOVEREIGNTY AND THE LEGAL LEGACIES OF EMPIRE IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY PRUSSIA

AbstractThe traceless disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire from the map and the minds of nineteenth-century Germany was until recently a pervasive historiographical trope. Revisionist scholarship has since uncovered the empire's modern afterlife as a model for federative political order and archetype of the greater German (großdeutsche) nation. This article identifies a different kind of legacy, by examining the empire's role in shaping the constitutional configuration of an individual successor state – Prussia. In a debate over Prussia's unwritten historical constitution unfolding in the 1840s, narratives of the empire's constitutional history became the basis on which the juridical structure of the kingdom's sovereignty was negotiated by jurists and political actors. These included, among others, King Frederick William IV and his brother William, the leaders of the German historical school of jurisprudence Savigny and Eichhorn, and the Prussian statesman Kamptz. The article contrasts two rival interpretations of the imperial legacy: a teleological narrative focusing on the evolution of state sovereignty within the imperial constitution and a genealogical narrative highlighting the origins of sovereignty as a hereditary fiefdom. In doing so, it questions the rigid distinction that historians have drawn between the empire and the statehood that replaced it in 1806.

Authority, Governance, Legitimacy, Representation: Some Thoughts from the Muslim Margins

The study of political theology has never been a neutral exercise in excavating the theoretical origins of sovereignty. The political contexts in which questions arise are instructive. In this paper, I argue that the very language of representation and legitimacy articulated for Muslims in the contemporary world may occlude the political challenges that obviate their possibility. Biopolitics, the construction of tradition, the possibility of a ‘philosophical religion’ and the challenge of rationality, and the incompleteness of the critique of political theology make the actuality of a critical and theoretical encounter with representation difficult at best, elusive at worst.

“All Power to the Imagination!”: A Leftist Critique of Bureaucratic Violence,Technologies and RationalityBook Review: Graeber D. 2015. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity,and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. New York: Melville House

In the preface to The Utopia of Rules, David Graeber states that his book does not attempt to build up a new theoretical approach to bureaucracy but it is rather an essay collection with a focus on three bureaucratic features: violence, technology and rationality. However, the cornerstone of bureaucracy seems to rest on both unexpected and anticipated effects of creativity and imagination, whether related to the work of government officials and origins of sovereignty, force fields and contemporary science development, or superheroes and comic book history. Graeber not only illustrates why our life has been organized around filling out forms (p. 44), but gives it a wider scale through an anthropological understanding of bureaucratic practices and technologies. The interesting thing is that he never gives a precise definition of what bureaucracy really is and where we can find it, but in the disenchanted modernity and modern capitalist economy it seems to be omnipresent. The book is divided into four thematic parts: the first is the structural violence and deliberate stupidity of bureaucratic institutions; the second questions scientific development and claims that we have moved from poetic to bureaucratic technologies; the third one is rationality and playfulness and their relation to human nature; and the last one (in an Appendix) considers the link between creativity and violence and the role of bureaucracy in it.

From Empire to Sovereignty—and Back?

Sovereignty apparently never ceases to attract scholarly attention. Long gone are the days when its meaning was uncontested and its essential attributes could be safely taken for granted by international theorists. During the past decades international relations scholars have increasingly emphasized the historical contingency of sovereignty and the mutability of its corresponding institutions and practices, yet these accounts have been limited to the changing meaning and function of sovereignty within the international system. This focus has served to reinforce some of the most persistent myths about the origin of sovereignty, and has obscured questions about the diffusion of sovereignty outside the European context.

Deus Vult: The Geopolitics of the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is a religious tradition with a highly centralised organisational structure which operates worldwide but that must adjust itself to and effectively operate in local and world-regional contexts that can often challenge and threaten to subvert its central doctrines, operational principles, and political compromises with secular authorities. The Church has long provided the source and model, with its base in the sacred origins of sovereignty, for a quintessentially Western statehood. In this context, I wish to raise three points for further discussion using the significant example of the Catholic Church that future research on the contemporary confluence between religion and geopolitics should address. The first is whether a church can have “geopolitics.” I answer in the affirmative with a number of arguments for doing so. The second is the idea, made in writing and in his practice by Pope Benedict, that Western civilisation is in crisis and that only a restoration of a historic Christendom (Europe) based on a reinvigorated Catholic Church can save it. I dispute the strategy of “hard” or coercive power and the focus on Europe he has apparently chosen as departing from what has often best served the Church in the past. Third, and finally, in the global struggle for souls, numbers matter. Somewhat akin to the struggle for primacy between states in the modern geopolitical imagination, the struggle for souls between faiths (Catholics and Protestants, Moslems and Christians, etc.) is once more in ascendance. But doesn't this quantitative emphasis risk subverting the Church's post-Vatican II emphasis on Christian practice in everyday life? The overall purpose of the article is to introduce religious organisation and associated theological claims into the problematic of geopolitics using the case of the world's largest Christian denomination.

Popes, Kings, and Endogenous Institutions: The Concordat of Worms and the Origins of Sovereignty

Popes, Kings, and Endogenous Institutions: The Concordat of Worms and the Origins of Sovereignty

The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the Origins of Sovereignty

(1999). The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the Origins of Sovereignty. The International History Review: Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 569-591.

Exemplars of Taking Liberties: The Iroquois Influence Thesis and the Problem of Evidence

OR nearly two decades, Donald A. Grinde, Jr., and Bruce E. Johansen F have been most outspoken proponents of controversial theory that Iroquois Confederacy and Great Law of Peace had an important influence on constitutional design of United States government. In three books-Grinde's The Iroquois and Founding of American Nation, Johansen's Forgotten Founders, and their co-authored Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and Evolution of Democracy-as well as in numerous articles and essays-the two have made case for what has come to be called Iroquois influence thesis.' Supporters applaud Grinde and Johansen for doing pioneering work in Indian history2 while critics decry influence thesis as deceptive and shoddy scholarship. In Exemplar of Liberty, most comprehensive presentation of influence thesis arguments and evidence to date, Grinde and Johansen contend that the character of American democracy evolved importantly (although, of course, not solely) from examples provided by American Indian confederacies that bordered British colonies. They hold that League of Iroquois, with its representative form of democracy, helped shape federal Constitution and as a catalyst for American unity. They find overwhelming evidence that, during framing and ratification process of United States Constitution, Iroquois lectured to colonial and revolutionary leaders on virtues of unity and served as an example of democracy for Europeans and colonial Americans. They also assert that the Iroquois had a profound impact on American notions about unity, territorial expansion, origins of sovereignty in people, and universal suffrage. They