The Military Revolution and Political Change

Downing, B. D.

doi:10.1515/9780691222189

Cited by 155 publications

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“…3. Cox, Dincecco, andOnorato 2021;Downing 1993;Finer 1975;Van Zanden, Buringh, and Bosker 2012. bargaining position of the elite actor. Incorporating this consideration into the model yields a previously unrecognized tension.…”

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A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments

Kenkel

Paine

2023

Int Org

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The development of parliamentary constraints on the executive was critical in Western European political history. Previous scholarship identifies external wars as a key factor, but with varying effects. Sometimes, willing monarchs granted parliamentary rights in return for revenues to fight wars. Yet at other times, war threats empowered rulers over other elites or caused states to fragment. We analyze a formal model to understand how external wars can either stimulate or undermine prospects for a contractual relationship between a ruler and elite actors. We recover the standard intuition that war threats make the ruler more willing to grant parliamentary rights in return for revenue. Our key insight is that war threats also affect the bargaining position of elites. A previously unrecognized tension yields our new findings: stronger outsider threats increase pressure either on elites to fund the ruler or on the ruler to accept constraints—but not both simultaneously. Elites with immobile wealth depend on the ruler for security. War threats undercut their credibility to refuse funding for an unconstrained ruler. By contrast, war threats make elites with mobile wealth and a viable exit option unwilling to fund a hopeless war effort. Only under circumscribed conditions do war threats align three conditions needed for parliament to arise in equilibrium: ruler willingness, elite credibility, and elite willingness. We apply our theory to posit strategic foundations for waves and reversals of historical European parliaments.

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A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments

Kenkel

Paine

2023

Int Org

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“…3 These European assemblies had originated partly from the feudal custom of rulers summoning their military vassals to meetings for consultation on important matters of governance; "[c]onsistent with the essentially contractual nature of military service, Carolingian kings convoked assemblies of knights in which matters of general policy and impending military campaigns were discussed by all, the king first among equals." 4 The appearance of these representative bodies was accompanied in several countries with the granting by the rulers of charters of rights and liberties, including the Magna Carta of 1215, the Treaty with the Ecclesiastical Princes (Privilegium in Favorem Principum Ecclesiasticum) of 1220 and the Privilegium in Favorem Principum of 1231 of the Holy Roman Empire, the Golden Bull of Hungary of 1222, and the French reforming ordinance of 1303 and provincial charters of 1315. These charters resulted from the opposition of rulers' subjects to the threat posed to feudal rights and customs by the expansion of royal power in times of war, an expansion which usually included administrative centralization and sharp increases in taxation.…”

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Towards a theory of revolution

Paccione¹

2023

Preprint

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This is an essay on comparative constitutional history and comparative revolution. In it, I will consider the development of the rule of law as a phase of state building, paying particular attention to representative institutions. I will compare the constitutional histories of England, France, Russia, Germany and the United States from their origins to the point in each nation’s history which I consider the end of that country’s revolution. It is my thesis that all revolutions are about law and constitutional arrangements. Revolutions answer the question: Who makes law? Where in the state does the legislative authority reside? I hope to show that the outcome of a revolution, the constitutional arrangements that result from it, is largely determined by the system of government that existed before the revolution. That is, however much revolutionaries might want to make a clean break with the past and create a totally new political system, the ultimate revolutionary outcome will have some continuity with the prerevolutionary system.

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The Apogee of Royal Power: Absolute Monarchy (The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)

Aguilera-Barchet

2014

A History of Western Public Law

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The Military Revolution and Political Change

Cited by 155 publications

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A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments

A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments

Towards a theory of revolution

The Apogee of Royal Power: Absolute Monarchy (The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)

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