The Populist Theory of the State in Early American Political Thought

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Peel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Imagination ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Deep Reservoir

That the “state” and the “people” are antonyms of American political thought is a widely held assumption. This essay argues that it is a mistake—Americans early in their thinking about politics distinguished the state from government and defined the state as the people themselves. Building on a deep reservoir of political thought pioneered by seventeenth-century theorists, Americans believed that to raise questions about the state was to inquire about the legitimacy of governmental action. The essay has three parts. It begins by explicating Quentin Skinner’s recent research on the concept of the state, supplemented by the work of other scholars, to apply that research to the American context. The essay then turns to a discussion of the concept of “the people” in the American context to orient the final section of the paper. Finally, the paper explicates James Wilson and St. George Tucker’s influential and rival populist theories of the American state. The overall aim of the essay is to stretch our political imagination and thus help us begin to reimagine the concept of the democratic state in more fruitful ways.

“A Trust That Cannot Be Delegated”: The Invention of Ratification Referenda

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-816 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEFFREY A. LENOWITZ
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American ◽  
The People ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Future Evaluation ◽  
The Way ◽  
Constitution Making

A ratification referendum is a procedure in which framers submit a constitution to the people for binding approval before implementation. It is widespread, recommended, and affects the contents and reception of constitutions, yet remains unstudied. Moreover, the reasons or justification for using the procedure remain unexplored. This is troubling because ratification referenda are optional, and thus should only be implemented for good reasons that, today, are no longer given. This article begins correcting this oversight by identifying those that brought about the first ratification referendum and explaining why they did so. I demonstrate that the Berkshire Constitutionalists called for the procedure during the events leading up to the creation of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, and that they justified their actions by asserting that the people have an unalienable right to ratify their constitution through a referendum, for this provided needed protection against potentially corrupt elites. This argument remains the most fully developed justification for the procedure to date. My analysis not only reveals ratification referenda to be another product of early American political thought, but also points the way forward for future evaluation of the procedure, and forces reflection upon the importance of having solid grounds for the choices involved in structuring a constitution-making process.

What Kind of Book is The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution?

2018 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American ◽  
The Relationship

Most scholarship on the ideology of the American Revolution asks the question: “What did American patriots think about politics”? But The Ideological Origins asks instead: “ How did patriots think about politics”? At issue here is the distinction between political theory and political consciousness. Once we get this distinction properly into view, we can rethink the relationship between two great, and apparently rivalrous, historiographies on early American political thought.

Filmer, Sir Robert (1588–1653)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann P. Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
The People ◽  
The Family ◽  
Liberal Political Theory

Filmer was one of the most important political thinkers in seventeenth-century England, and the author of Patriarcha. Locke replied to this and other works by Filmer in the Two Treatises of Government – perhaps the most famous of all works of liberal political theory. Filmer argued that notions of mixed or limited government were false and pernicious, and that the powers of all legitimate rulers were derived not from the people but directly from God, to whom alone rulers were accountable. Filmer’s contemporaries commonly held that the authority of a father and husband over his family stemmed not from the consent of his wife and children but from the natural and divinely appointed order of things. Filmer harnessed such ideas to the cause of royal absolutism by arguing that the state and the family were essentially the same institution.

Churchill’s Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-91
Author(s):  
Ian Ward
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
History Plays ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Caryl Churchill ◽  
And Gender

This is the first of three chapters which focus, in their different ways, on the writing of history in contemporary theatre. This chapter concentrates on two ‘history’ plays written by Caryl Churchill during the 1970s; Light Shining in Buckinghamshire and Vinegar Tom. Churchill emerged as one of the most influential voices in radical British theatre during the closing decades of the last century. Both plays were set in the mid-seventeenth-century, but were written to resonate with themes familiar in modern legal and political thought. The title of the first play is taken from a Leveller tract published in the second part of the 1640s. Churchill uses it to explore the state of radical politics in later twentieth-century Britain. The second play, Vinegar Tom, is a contribution to a distinctive sub-genre of ‘witchcraft’ plays, which use the ‘crime’ of witchcraft as a vehicle for revisiting the relation of law and gender in modern society.

The Anti-Federalists and Early American Political Thought.

1996 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 909
Author(s):  
Richard Buel ◽  
Christopher M. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American

Ruler and state, state and society in Ottoman political thought

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinos Sariyannis
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
State And Society

It can be argued that the late seventeenth century marks the transition of the Ottoman entity into an early modern state, with one of its main features identified as the distinction between the ruler and the state apparatus. The paper aims to explore whether, when and how such a process reflected in contemporary political thought. It analyzes the ways Ottoman elite authors represented society vis-à-vis the sultan; also, the development of the notion of “state” in the same authors and how it came to be considered different from that of the “ruler”.

The Anti-Federalists and Early American Political Thought.

1996 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 405
Author(s):  
Robert W. Hoffert ◽  
Christopher M. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Early American
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