Volker Sellin - Violence and Legitimacy
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Benjamin Constant distinguished two kinds of government: unlawful government based on violence, and legitimate government based on the general will. In Europe monarchy was for over a thousand years considered the natural form of legitimate government. The sources of its legitimacy were the dynastic principle, religion, and the ability to protect against foreign aggression. At the end of the eighteenth century the revolutions in America and France called into question the traditional legitimacy of monarchy, but Volker Sellin shows that in response to this challenge monarchy opened up new sources of legitimacy by concluding alliances with constitutionalism, nationalism, and social reform. In some cases the age of revolution brought on a new type of leader, basing his claim to power on charisma.
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Volker Sellin
Violence and Legitimacy
Originally published as Gewalt und Legitimitt. Die europische Monarchie im Zeitalter der Revolutionen , Munich, Oldenbourg, 2011.
ISBN 978-3-11-055839-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-056139-5
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-055900-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover illustration: Nikolaj Dmitrievi Dmitriev-Orenburgskij (1838-1898), General Skobelev on horseback (1883), Irkutsk Regional Art Museum after the name of V. P. Sukaev.
www.degruyter.com
Preface
The German original of the present book was published in 2011 by Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich. I am very grateful to Martin Rethmeier of De Gruyter-Oldenbourg-Verlag, Munich, for his readiness to publish the English version as well and to Dr. Elise Wintz and Rabea Rittgerodt for their careful editing.
Volker Sellin
Heidelberg, 27 May, 2017
Preface to the German edition of 2011
Every scholar stands on the shoulders of his predecessors. The authors from whom I have profited are listed in the bibliography. During work on the manuscript I had several opportunities to discuss my ideas with others. The chapters are based on conferences I gave at the Academy of Sciences of Heidelberg. Participation in three international conferences was helpful in clarifying my approach. Upon invitation of Lucien Bly I participated in December 2000 in a conference on La prsence des Bourbons en Europe, XVI e XXI e sicle at the Sorbonne. In October 2002 Marina Tesoro invited me to a conference on Monarchia, tradizione, identit nazionale at the University of Pavia, and in November 2007 I participated in a conference on Monarchia e legittimazione politica in Europa tra Otto e Novecento, organized by Fulvio Cammarano and Giulia Guazzaloca at the Facolt di Scienze Politiche of Bologna University. At the invitation of Fabio Rugge and Marina Tesoro I served in March 2009 as guest professor at the Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori of Pavia University where I had the opportunity to discuss my approach with Italian students. I am grateful to the staff of numerous libraries I consulted. In the first place I should like to thank the library of Heidelberg University and its director Dr. Veit Probst no less than Irina Lukka of the Slavonic Department of the Finnish National Library at Helsinki. Special gratitude is due to Martin Rethmeier and Dr. Julia Schreiner of Oldenbourg Publishing House.
Volker Sellin
Heidelberg, 18 April, 2011
1Introduction
Il n existe au monde que deux pouvoirs, l un illgitime, c est la force ; l autre lgitime, c est la volont gnrale .
Benjamin Constant
Legitimate and Illegitimate Government
Why do people allow themselves to be governed by others? It appears safe to say that people are ready to be governed by others if they consider that government legitimate. The criterion of legitimacy is agreement with convictions of right. According to Peter Graf Kielmansegg legitimacy is social acceptance as of right.
By the criteria of legality and recognition on the one hand and arbitrariness and constraint on the other Aristotle had distinguished right or constitutional from degenerate governments, orthai politeiai from parekbaseis . He explained the distinction by referring to the household where he qualified the government of the master over his slaves as despotic and over his children and his wife as a rational guidance of free individuals. In a monarchy he called lawful government royal, in a democracy political.
Aristotles distinctions dominated political thought way into the early modern period. At the end of the 16 th century Johannes Althusius defined the legitimate ruler ( legitimus magistratus ) in Aristotelian tradition by his intention to serve the common good.
Although the present book does not follow the narrow understanding of legitimacy that dominated the Restoration period, its object is nevertheless the legitimacy of monarchy, not the legitimacy of government in general. This limitation of the focus is justified by the fact that even after the French Revolution monarchy remained for more than a century the prevailing form of government in Europe.
Monarchy and Revolution
During the French Revolution the legitimacy of government was redefined. On 26 August 1789 the National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The third article deals with sovereignty. It reads: The source of sovereignty resides essentially with the nation. No body and no individual are permitted to exercise authority which does not expressly emanate from the nation.
The monarchy that was created by this constitution did not last. Eleven months after delivering his oath on the constitution the Legislative Assembly deposed Louis XVI. Only six weeks later the National Convention abolished the monarchy as well. During the following months the Convention sat in judgment on Louis XVI. In the end the King was condemned to death and executed on 21 January 1793. Within three years France had thus experienced two fundamental turns of her political system. By claiming the sovereignty for the nation in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 the National Assembly had demonstrated that the absolute monarchy had lost its legitimacy, and the proclamation of the Republic on 21 September 1792 similarly confirmed the loss of legitimacy of the democratic monarchy as well that had been founded only one year before. The turns occurred because in both cases the existing constitution no longer conformed to the general will and was therefore perceived as a constraint or better, as force without legitimacy.
In political theory power without legitimacy has always been regarded as despotic. Two types of tyrants have been distinguished: the tyrant who had usurped the government against the law ( usurpator ex defectu tituli ), and the tyrant who had legally come to power, but governed tyrannically ( usurpator ex parte exercitii ). Law was thus construed as something unalterable and intangible, sanctioned by tradition.
The transformation of Louis XVI to a mere organ of the constitution by the Constituante followed a different pattern. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789 no unlawful acts of the King are listed. The justification for reducing the King to the executive function only was not the abuse of power. The truth is that the legitimacy of a government was fundamentally redefined. Louis XVI had lost the legal basis of his government because the principles of monarchical legitimacy themselves had changed. In the terms of Benjamin Constant Old Regime monarchy had inadvertently transformed itself into a tyrannical regime because it had failed adequately to conform to the change of the general will ( volont gnrale ).
Preserving Legitimacy, a Never-Ending Task
The usurpation of the constituent power by the Constituante marks the beginning of a process during which in the whole of Europe the relationship between legitimacy and power, monarchy and despotism underwent a fundamental change. Every indubitably legitimate monarchy could degenerate into a regime of brute force if it insisted inflexibly on its traditional rights. Therefore the European monarchies were confronted with the need incessantly to reassert their legitimacy and to devise strategies to adapt to social change. In September 1791 Louis XVI saved his throne only by taking an oath on the constitution, and the restoration of Louis XVIII in 1814 succeeded only because he conceded a constitution that preserved fundamental achievements of the Revolution and the Empire.
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