Review: On Sovereignty by Jean Bodin
Part of an Ongoing Book Review Series
On Sovereignty, a work by French theorist Jean Bodin in the late sixteenth century, aims at nothing short of thoroughly defining sovereignty by exhaustively describing what it is and what it is not. According to Bodin, sovereignty is the “absolute and perpetual power of the commonwealth” and that rulers are “but trustees of that power until such time as it pleases the people… to take it back.” This, then, initially makes Bodin appear as an early democrat of sorts, but his arguments soon take a turn in a way that are sometimes difficult to comprehend.
Bodin spends a great deal of time asserting that if there are qualifiers or checks against a ruler’s power, then he or she is indeed not the sovereign. His examples include the establishment of the tribunes, thus not even the dictator (once these tribunes were established) was sovereign. If one’s rule is limited in duration or is conditional to any exterior force or exception by any other human being or group, then that leader is not sovereign. Sovereignty, Bodin argues repeatedly, is perpetual and absolute.
He illustrates this point by using the Great King of Tartary’s appointment/election as a striking example. Here, the people beg the potential king to rule over them. In response, he asserts the condition that absolute power is to be bestowed upon him. He states, “If that is what you want of me, you must be ready to do as I command, and who I order killed must be killed forthwith and without delay, and the whole kingdom must be entrusted to me and put into my hands… The word that I speak will be my sword,” and the people applaud him. Bodin contends that this power is absolute, for it has no other condition than what is commanded by the law of God and nature. Indeed, the laws of God and nature are the only limits to the power of the sovereign.
Furthermore, the prince is not subject to his own laws or to the laws of his predecessors. If a prince were bound by any man-made law, including those originating with him, then he would be subordinate to man’s law, which a sovereign cannot be. Additionally, the prince is only bound to contracts and oaths of predecessors if they are his particular heirs. Here, we see the importance of royal lineage for Bodin. The critical difference between a contract of a previous ruler that will or won’t be honored is whether the prince shares the blood of the predecessor. It appears that there are nearly no earthly limitations to the power of the sovereign except for the bounds of the family line.
Just as a true sovereign cannot be made subservient to tribunes, nor can he be subject to the propertied class. All people within the sovereign’s sphere of influence are subject to his laws. He is bound to no obligation to others in this respect. Bodin asserts, “we thus see that the main point of sovereign majesty and absolute power consists of giving the law to subjects in general without their consent.”
Despite all of Bodin’s descriptions of what defines absolute power, he also points to the favorability of a sovereign who follows his own laws, though he is in no way obligated to do so. He uses the example of Trajan, who “swore to keep the laws, even though he was exempt in his capacity as prince. It was to provide his subjects with an example of scrupulous observance.” Bodin here makes the argument that although the sovereign need not follow the laws imposed on his people, doing so would be seen as evidence of a virtuous leader.
Bodin draws a compelling—and in my estimation, accurate—distinction between right and law. He maintains that “there is a great difference between right and law. Right is based on pure equity; law implies command. For the law is nothing but the command of a sovereign making use of his power.” It is here that Bodin makes a grand assumption without feeling the need to explain himself. He states that it is “a kind of legal absurdity to say that it is in the power of the prince to act dishonestly, since his power should always be measured by the standard of justice… It is also a mistake to say that a sovereign prince has power to steal another’s goods and to do evil, since it is rather impotence, weakness, and cowardice.” The point he is making is that a sovereign has no power to unjustly take another’s property without just cause and should not do other immoral acts.
He goes on to state that taking property is a violation of natural law. Bodin appears to accept the ownership of property as a tenet of natural law without seeing a need to explain why. I found this somewhat surprising, considering that this was not exactly a settled issue in the late sixteenth century. It can be appreciated that he utilizes property rights in an a priori way, but it is nevertheless surprising that he does so. Knowing that property rights are a presuppositional framework for Bodin makes understanding some of his reasoning easier. It is simply surprising that he seeks to explain the nature of sovereignty at length but assumes a natural right of property ownership without question or explanation.
Finally, Bodin rejects the notion of mixed government put forward by Aristotle, Polybius, and others. This is due to the fact that “Aristotle, Polybius, and others spoke of parts of government and mixed government, [however] they never addressed the issue of sovereignty.” Bodin concluded that a sovereign was indivisible, and this made him reject the notion of mixed government. The fact that the political thinkers who preceded him and advocated for mixed government avoided (or simply never considered) the issue of sovereignty emboldened his reason to discard their thesis. He makes this point clear when he states that “to combine monarchy with democracy and with aristocracy is impossible and contradictory… [W]ho will be the subjects and who will they obey if they also have the power to make law.” He goes on to state that political mixture “then, is not a state, but rather the corruption of a state.”
It must be said that it appears, at times, that Bodin conflates sovereignty with force. He acts as though they are one and the same when he goes to great lengths to define what sovereignty is, but then splits it from arbitrary force when he speaks to ruling with some sort of moral compass. To be fair, he notes that the distinction can be found in the realm of the laws of God and nature. Nevertheless, his thesis is muddled at times. He does seem concerned with the threat of arbitrary power, as he contends that one who has taken power “by force or fraud” may be legitimately assassinated, even if he is later given approval by the people, because “it is nevertheless permissible to kill him… What tyrants force upon a people stripped of power cannot be called consent.” This reasserts what he states earlier in the work that sovereignty appears to reside in the commonwealth. However, he continues by stating that it is never legitimate to “raise arms against a sovereign prince unless by a special and unquestionable mandate from God…” Is the violation of natural law the special and unquestionable mandate? Or does it need to be something else? Does it require repeated violations of natural law? Bodin doesn’t exactly say.
For all of these reasons, it is both a joy and a frustration to read Bodin’s On Sovereignty. It is valuable for his desire to crystallize and sanction the source and definition of what a sovereign is. It was clearly of great importance to him to do so. This is reinforced at the end of the work when he asserts that a people’s devotion to their sovereign “is always more sacred and ought to be more inviolable than [devotion to] a father.” Nevertheless, one benefits from discerning the theory of natural rights he employs and takes for granted. He assumes that readers will both understand and agree with him on this concept, which underpins much of his thesis. Bodin may conflate, and his points may be muddled at times, but if it is understood that Bodin utilizes a first-principles approach of natural law (and the natural right of property ownership specifically), then reading his thesis regarding sovereignty is worthwhile.
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