scholarly journals Looking for democracy in fiduciary government. Historical notes on an unsettled relationship (ca. 1520-1650)

Daímon ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
David Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
State Power ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fiduciary Duties ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Normative Foundations

Una perspectiva reciente sobre los fundamentos normativos del derecho público ha propuesto concebir las relaciones entre ciudadanía y Estado como una “relación fiduciaria”, usando deberes fiduciarios del ámbito iusprivado para justificar limitaciones jurídicas y morales al poder del Estado. La gobernanza fiduciaria también ha sido señalada como una característica distintiva del republicanismo y la soberanía popular, ya que sitúa a la comunidad política como fideicomitente y beneficiaria de cualquier acto administrativo. En este artículo se revisan algunas concepciones protomodernas del gobierno considerando sus justificaciones explícitamente fiduciarias. Concluye con una interpretación fiduciaria del iusnaturalismo Leveller, especialmente necesario para entender (y puede que restaurar) la relación de la gobernanza fiduciaria con la democracia.   A recent perspective on the normative foundations of public law has proposed to conceive citizen-state relationships as a “fiduciary relationship”, using private-law fiduciary duties to justify legal and moral constrains on state power. Fiduciary governance has also been pointed as a distinct feature of republicanism and popular sovereignty, since it places the political community as trustor and beneficiary of any administrative act. This paper reviews some early modern conceptions of government considering their explicit fiduciary justifications. It concludes with a fiduciary account of Leveller natural law, especially needed to understand (and maybe to restore) the relationship between fiduciary governance and democracy.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction sets out the main themes of the book and the approach taken. It characterizes political thought as the analysis and examination of how earthly communities flourish, as distinct from other kinds of communities like churches or households. It argues that although the period began with the consolidation of large empires, there was a growing concern to understand and to defend local or regional political communities, and that these developments were shaped by social and economic change. It emphasizes the need to see the political ideas and aspirations of early modern people within the context of their other desires and aspirations, and the context of their specific historical situations. It shows how the approach taken in this book builds upon the existing work of scholars and historians. It also sets out the distinctive features of the book: the inclusion of lands beyond Europe, the emphasis on natural law, and the relationship between political thought and social change.

scholarly journals Schmitt, Locke, and the Limits of Liberalism

Konturen ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Relationship

This article brings Carl Schmitt's Political Theology into conversation with John Locke's Second Treatise of Government. Two fundamental issues are considered: the relationship between Locke's theory of prerogative power and Schmitt's sovereign/commissarial distinction, and the place of the theological—in particular the “miraculous” nature of the exception. While some have claimed that Locke's theory of prerogative fits the model of “commissarial dictatorship” I argue that Locke actually complicates the sovereign/commissarial distinction by maintaining the tensions between prerogative, law and popular judgment. Schmitt, on the other hand, dissolves the tension by absorbing popular sovereignty into sovereign exceptionalism. Concerning the miraculous nature of the exception, I argue that Schmitt's claim should be understood as part of a broader effort to render politics serious and so I situate his remarks in light of the complex relationship between the political and the moral in his Concept of the Political. Because Locke's politics is “already” serious in the sense of being firmly situated within natural law, exceptional circumstances do not perform the same redemptive function.

scholarly journals Truth and Toleration in Early Modern Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-70
Author(s):  
Maria Rosa Antognazza
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Universal Truth ◽  
The Relationship

The Reformation presented with heightened urgency the question of how to relate the system of beliefs regarded as fundamental by an established political community to alternative beliefs introduced by new groups and individuals. This chapter revisits different ways of addressing this problem, focusing on the relationship between truth and toleration. After discussing a variety of approaches, it investigates whether grounds for a general and principled theory of toleration can be found in religious truth itself and, following the tradition of natural law, in some universal truth discoverable by natural reason. The upshot is that, from a theoretical point of view, the culprit in intolerance is not in itself belief in some objective truth.

Calvinists, Arminians, Socinians: Popular Sovereignty and Natural Rights in Early Modern Political Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
James Moore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Hugo Grotius

This chapter focuses upon natural rights in the writings of Hugo Grotius, the Levellers and John Locke and the manner in which their understanding of rights was informed by distinctive Protestant theologies: by Arminianism or the theology of the Remonstrant Church and by Socinianism. The chapter argues that their theological principles and the natural rights theories that followed from those principles were in conflict with the theology of Calvin and the theologians of the Reformed church. The political theory that marks the distinctive contribution of Calvin and the Reformed to political theory was the idea of popular sovereignty, an idea revived in the eighteenth century, in the political writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Concluding Remarks to Part 3

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Sphere ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 15 summarizes the chapters which addressed the third sphere, the relationship of labor to the political community. It reiterates that since Israel was established, the labor market’s borders have become ever more porous, while the borders of the national (Jewish) political community have remained firm: the Jewish nationalism which guides government policy is as strong as ever. NGOs, drawing on a discourse of human rights, are able to assist some non-citizens but this discourse also resonates with the idea of individual responsibility: the State is no longer willing to support “non-productive” populations, who are now being shoehorned into a labor market which offers few opportunities for meaningful employment, and is saturated by cheaper labor intentionally imported by the State in response to powerful employer lobbies. These trends suggest a partial reorientation of organized labor’s “battlefront”, from a face-off with capital to an appeal to the public and state.

Neoliberalism, Neocorporatism, and Worker Representation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 1 lays out the book’s theoretical framework. Accepting the claim that Israel is a neoliberalizing society, it asserts labor’s agency and its potential to thwart neoliberalism as part of a struggle taking place on the ideological or symbolic level too. It then proposes neocorporatism as a useful conceptual approach, and links this to union revitalization and concepts of power. These theoretical terms and concepts are used to anchor the three “spheres” of union activity which structure the book: union democracy, or workers’ relationship to their representative organization; the balance of power between labor and capital, and the way the potential clash of interests between them is viewed and played out; and the relationship of labor to the political establishment and wider political community. Finally, a short coda explains the research process and approach that led to the book.

Conclusion—Rousseau’s paradox

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter binds the book together, recapitulating its general argument, and offering pointers as to how the study relates to some contemporary questions of political theory. It suggests that a classification that distinguishes between Weber the ‘liberal’, Schmitt the ‘conservative’ and Neumann the ‘social democrat’, cannot provide an adequate understanding of this episode in the history of political thought. Nor indeed can it do so for other periods. In this book, one part of the development of their ideas has focused on the relationship between state and politics. By learning from their examples, people continue their own search for an acceptable balance between the freedom of the individual and the claims of the political community.

Laws, Liberties, and the Will of the People

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-177
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Development Of Resistance ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Role Of Religion

From the 1560s, tensions between Protestant and Catholics escalated and this was accompanied by a wave of writing on political and religious ideas, especially in France and the Netherlands. There was a renewed interest in the nature and origins of authority within the political sphere, particularly the importance of the ‘people’ and the ways in which their will could be both represented and controlled. This chapter considers some of the key texts of resistance theory written in the 1560s and 1570s, including Francogallia and the Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos in France, and George Buchanan’s De Jure Regni apud Scotos in Scotland. Discussions of liberty and privileges in the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt are also considered; here historically based arguments began to be supplemented by appeals to wider principles of morality and natural law. The election of Henry of Valois to the Polish throne provides one example of elective monarchy in practice. This chapter discusses the role of religion and of legal arguments in the development of resistance theories. It also highlights some of the practical and conceptual difficulties in appealing to popular sovereignty, especially in a period of deep confessional divisions, and shows how the authority of magistrates could be understood in different ways.

Reading Hobbes’s Sovereign into a Burmese Narrative of Police Torture

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-211
Author(s):  
Nick Cheesman
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Order ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Throughout February 2012, a court sitting at Myanmar’s central prison recorded a defendant’s narrative of torture by policemen to have him confess to a bombing two years prior. How was this record made possible? What does the narrative reveal about the relationship of police torturers to the political community giving them authority to act? Working from Agamben’s intuition that in the moment of violence the policeman occupies an area symmetrical to the sovereign, inasmuch as his use of violence is justified in the name of public order, I suggest the account of police torture in this case can be explained in terms of Hobbes’s theory of attributed action. Like Hobbes’s sovereign, the Burmese policemen had the prerogative to decide when and how to use violence against the detained subject on behalf of the state. That the defendant could later recount to a judge the torture done to him was only because he lacked standing to lay claims against sovereign police, who he himself, as a member of the political community, had authorised. Ironically, the record of his narrative was possible precisely because his claims were without efficacy.

Conscience and Empire: Politics and Moral Theology in the Early Modern Portuguese World

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 473-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Marcocci
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Vocabulary

This article presents the first reconstruction of the relationship between conscience and empire in the Portuguese World between 1500 and 1650. It shows to what extent the foundation of the Mesa da Consciência (“Board of Conscience”), a royal council of theologians devoted to issues like war, commerce, conversion, and slavery, shaped the imperial ideology. In this context, “conscience” emerged as a keyword in the political vocabulary, reflecting the importance of moral theology for the political language in which the empire was conceived. It not only bolstered the hegemony of theologians but also encouraged the emergence of a missionary casuistry, which became increasingly independent of the central authorities in the kingdom and in Rome. Under the Habsburg domination (1580-1640) this system was dismantled and theologians lost their centrality at court. After the Restoration of 1640 some of the old institutions were recovered in name, but the old interconnection between politics and moral theology was not re-installed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document