Controlling the State

Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today

Scott Gordon, Scott GORDON

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780674009776
  9780674169876
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674037830
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Constitutions
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the development of the theory and practice of constitutionalism, defined as a political system in which the coercive power of the state is controlled through a pluralistic distribution of political power. It explores the main venues of constitutional practice in ancient Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Venice, the Dutch Republic, seventeenth-century England, and eighteenth-century America.

From its beginning in Polybius' interpretation of the classical concept of "mixed government," the author traces the theory of constitutionalism through its late medieval appearance in the Conciliar Movement of church reform and in the Huguenot defense of minority rights. After noting its suppression with the emergence of the nation-state and the Bodinian doctrine of "sovereignty," the author describes how constitutionalism was revived in the English conflict between king and Parliament in the early Stuart era, and how it has developed since then into the modern concept of constitutional democracy.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Doctrine of Sovereignty
• 2 Athenian Democracy
• 3 The Roman Republic
• 4 Countervailance Theory in Medieval Law, Catholic Ecclesiology, and Huguenot Political Theory
• 5 The Republic of Venice
• 6 The Dutch Republic
• 7 The Development of Constitutional Government and Countervailance Theory in Seventeenth-Century England
• 8 American Constitutionalism
• 9 Modern Britain
• Epilogue
• References
• Index