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E L E V E N Sovereignty: Organized Unity of Action and a Right to Civil Disobedience FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE MODERN constitutional state, the development from the medieval "plurality of rule" to the early modern concentration of public power must appear as the logical progression from the "Dark Ages" to the "enlightened" world of modern statehood. But this linear interpretation of progress is as ahistorical as it is reductionist. Well into the early modern age, there were at least two equallyviable paths towards modernization.1 One was the formation of centralized territorial nation-states, and in them the concentration of power at one single , unified, and exclusive centre of authority. The other was based on the maintenance of a plural organization of overlapping jurisdictionsand shared power structures. The historical victory of the former over the latter was by no means a natural outcome, the inevitable result of enlightened superiority. It was, in the classical formulation of Charles Tilly, an outcome brought about by the superiority of power, not of political organization: "We discover a world in which small groups of power-hungry men fought off numerous rivals and great popular resistance in the pursuit of their own ends."2 The political concept upon which the exclusive power of these men came to be based was that of sovereignty, defined by Jean Bodin as "puissance absolue &c perpetuelle," the ultimate power of sanction that alone can determine the scope and dimension of all other and merely 1 Compare Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European State-Making," in Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 17-31; also by the same author, Coercion, Capital, and European States AD 990-1992 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992), 65. 2 Charles Tilly, "Western State-Makingand Theories of Political Transformation," in Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe, 635. 169 170 EARLY MODERN CONCEPTS FOR A LATE MODERN WORLD intermediate authority, and is itself not bound by its own laws (potestas legibus soluta}.3 It needs to be recapitulated that Bodin's epochal formulation was a response to the religious wars in France, an appeal to overcome the conflictual and murderous fragmentation of power in the aftermath of Reformation. He did not have in mind to provide the power-hungry men of the time with theoretical legitimation. His theoretical goal was the suspension of conflict through the elimination of all plural sources of power and authority. In practice, however, his formula failed to square with reality. The interlocking complexity of dynastic rule in the emerging European state system did not allow for a clean separation of territorial sovereignty. For those who governed, therefore, the concept of absolute and unlimited power only meant licence to pursue their interests even more ruthlessly . And even within consolidating territorial nation-states such as France, the continued existence of particularistic powers could not be denied. Bodin himself had to admit limitations of absolute sovereignty: natural law, the fundamental laws of France, and in particular the material autonomy of the estates, which could not be taxed without their consent. For the time being, the concept of sovereignty remained as confused in theory as it appeared diffuse in practice.4 Bodin could only claim that absolute sovereignty was needed in order to overcome factionism and conflict. He had no explanation for its legitimate foundation . More convincing were attempts to construct the desired unity of power with the help of contractual theories. During the Middle Ages, such theories had legitimized the dualistic order of king and estates, granting each autonomy in their respective spheres, albeit under the unifying bond of universal Christianity. With that bond destroyed, contracts had to be reconstructed as acts of unilateral power cessation. Depending on each author's political perspective, the relationship between rulers and ruled could be interpreted either in favour of princely absolutism, or in opposition to it. Hobbes and Rousseau would occupy the extreme poles. In the social contract theory of Hobbes, the people irrevocably cede all power to the sovereign in a "Faustian pact."5 For Rousseau, the social contract establishes—hardly less Faustian—the sovereignty of the general will over all particular ones. 3 Jean Bodin, Les Six Livres de la Republique (1576), 1.8. In the Latin edition, which Althusius probably used, this definition reads as tnajestas est summa in cives legibusque soluta potestas. 4 See G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Thought (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966...

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