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Spain  Governance  Antonio Feros Early in the reign of Philip IV (1621–1665), several of his ministers publicly stated that the government of the Spanish monarchy was a “regal government,” government by one, and not a “political government,” government by many. For them, and many others at the time, the Spanish ruler was not a “prince” (a primus inter pares) but a monarch, and therefore the lord of the Crown not its tutor or administrator. Theseviews of the Spanish monarch, with full authorityand control of his government, stand in stark contrast to other views and also to political and administrative practices.Unlike some of Philip IV’s ministers, Philip II (1556–1598), for example, seemed to hold a different position regarding the capacityof the monarch to rule alone (Fig. 54). “If the kings who must reign and govern their peoples and their universal domains in peace and with justice had no assistance or advice,itisdoubtfulthattheyalonewouldhavethestrength towithstand and execute such labors.”1 These are the introductory words in the chapter on “Counsel to the King” of the Nueva recopilación, a compilation of laws published in the 1560s under Philip II’s orders. Many political writers of the period also advocated similar views. The Spanish translation of Jean Bodin’s The Six Books of the Commonwealth (1590), a book which many historians believe promoted the formation of an “absolute” monarchy, was equally clear that the king should not rule alone: “The Prince ought to follow the advice of the Council not only on grave and important matters, but also on minor ones. There is nothing that gives greater credit to the laws and commands of a prince, a people, or a commonwealth than to have them passed by the wise and prudent advice of a Senate or a magistrate.”2 The monarch also needed to govern in collaboration with his subjects, because his main obligations were to protect the commonwealth, to respect the laws of the realms, and to administer justice. In other words, the monarch had the obligation to exercise his office not for his own benefit but for the good of the commonwealth. It is fascinating to observe that the metaphors most frequently used for the Spanish monarch were those of father, judge, and protector . According to theories of the time, a stable and harmonious commonwealth could exist only if the monarch inspired the love, respect, and obedience of his subjects and believed that the interests of the king, his kingdoms, and his subjects needed to be in full accord. In many ways, the best definition of the seventeenth-­ century monarchical system came from a Dutch writer, Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694). The main characteristic of a monarchical government, he wrote, was its “irregular form” (respublica irregularis), a type of government in which “we do not find that unity which is the essence of a state completely established, not because of a disease or fault in the administration of the country, but because the irregularity of its form has been as it were legitimated by public law or custom.”3 The seventeenth-­ century Spanish monarchy was indeed a respublica irregularis: it lacked centralization , unity, and uniformity, and its government was not dominated exclusively by the king’s will. Several historians and scholars have characterized the early modern state as the coexistence and collaboration of diverse powers and institutions. Contemporaries shared the belief that none of the institutions, and certainly not the so-­ called central institutions, could monopolize the implementation of policies. In the early modern Spanish world, therefore, the implementation of social order, the main aim of the state, did not derive from the actions of the monarchical authorities alone but was fundamentally a negotiated order agreed upon by the monarchy, the various communities, social orders, kingdoms, and their representatives . The main explanation of the need for political collaboration among the various institutions and authorities was the relatively weak powerof the state to “actually penetrate civil societyand to implement logistically political decisions though the realms.”4 The state, or the stateelite, had neither the legitimacy nor the ability to implement policies without the consent of social groups and regional and local powers. James Amelang has accurately explained the political foundations that made this negotiated order possible. The key—he writes—for the effective functioning . . . of the [Spanish] Monarchy . . . were the relations between central government, focused around but hardly limited to the figure of the monarch, and a wide range of elites located at both the center and the multiple peripheries...

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