Stability without Statehood: Lessons from Europe's History before the Sovereign State

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Stability without Statehood

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Stability without Statehood Lessons from Europe’s History before the Sovereign State Peter Haldén Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden

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© Peter Haldén 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–27355–9 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haldén, Peter. Stability without statehood : lessons from Europe’s history before the sovereign state / Peter Haldén. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–27355–9 (hardback) 1. State, The. 2. State, The – History. 3. Republicanism – History. 4. Republicanism – History – Case studies. 5. Political stability – History. 6. Political stability – History – Case studies. 7. Holy Roman Empire – History – 1648–1804. 8. United States – Politics and government – 1783–1865. 9. European Union – History. I. Title. JC11.H29 2011 320.1—dc22

2011011816

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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To the memory of Folke Oscar Haldén

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Contents Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction: Through the Shadows of the State 1

The Fiction of the State as the Good, Natural and the Beautiful 1.1 The state from prescriptive polemics to a descriptive grid 1.2 Rule, rules and relations before states: republican systems theory 1.3 Giving shape to action: forms of rule 1.4 Viability and survival

2 Remedies: The Neglected Heritage of Republicanism 2.1 Republican theories of world politics 2.2 Republics evade the spectrum states-system of states 2.3 The ideal type of the compound republic 2.4 Compound republics in world politics 3

4

A Long-lived Republic: The Holy Roman Empire 1648–1763 3.1 A neglected Methuselah 3.2 The Holy Roman Empire as a compound republic 3.3 The Holy Roman Empire and systems in the environment 3.4 The Holy Roman Empire in world politics A Solitary Republic: The United States of America 1776–1865 4.1 Self- evident truths? 4.2 Towards the new world 4.3 The United States as a republican form of rule 4.4 The Empire of Liberty

5 A Shielded Republic: The European Union 1957–2010 5.1 Great expectations: the European Union as a compound republic

1 7 7 18 23 26 31 31 35 39 48 51 51 54 67 72 92 92 95 97 109 119 119

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Contents

5.2 The European Union and systems in the environment 5.3 The European Union in world politics 1992–2010

131 140

6 Republican Commonwealths versus State-Building 6.1 Leviathan’s travels 6.2 The coup d’état of the state in contemporary security 6.3 Republican security analysis and historical analogies 6.4 Republican commonwealths

164 164 167 169 177

Conclusions Comparing republics: the Holy Roman Empire, the United States and the European Union Republican policies for the twenty-first century

182

Bibliography

199

Index

221

183 194

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Acknowledgements During the course of writing this book, I have incurred many debts, great and small. My greatest gratitude goes to Professor Friedrich V. Kratochwil for reading many drafts with patience, scrutiny and imagination. Without him, this book would not have come into being. I am also much grateful to Professor Jens Bartelson for encouragement, support and inspiration. Great thanks go to Lars Bo Kaspersen, who introduced me to state-formation theory and to the complex and rewarding world of historical sociology, for encouraging me to follow this project to the end. Noel Parker for his help and encouragement to sustain my interest in empires. Jens, Lars Bo and Noel have also helped me greatly in presenting my thoughts, often opaque and convoluted, even gnomic, in more accessible ways. I am also grateful to Richard Little for comments on early drafts. I want to thank Vivek Sharma who suggested that my mode of analysis could, and ought to be, applied to cases outside of Europe, in particular to weak and failed states. I am grateful to Ove K. Pedersen and Henrik Stenius for being my hosts in Copenhagen and Helsinki, respectively. I want to thank the anonymous reviewer at Palgrave Macmillan who suggested the chapter on early American history, which enriched the book. I am also grateful to Dan Öberg, Trine Villumsen and Eva Haldén for many discussions of early manuscripts. As always, any errors and shortcomings of the book are entirely my fault. Final words of gratitude go to my wife, Ann-Mari, who has followed me on many travels over the European continent as well as virtual time travels in the labyrinths of European and American history. I acknowledge that the section “The Holy Roman Empire as a Compound Republic” in Chapter 5 draws on parts of the chapter “Geopolitik och konstitutionalism i Tysk-romerska riket 1648” in Haldén (ed.) Den Westfaliska Freden 1648: Kontext, arv och konsekvenser (2009), pp.13–39 published by Nordic Academic Press. PETER H ALDÉN

ix

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Introduction: Through the Shadows of the State

For now we see thorough a glass, darkly; but then face to face Corinthians 1: 13 The purpose of this book is to present a new understanding of the state, what it is, what it does and what it cannot do. The strategy that I have chosen is to study forms of rule that are not reducible to either states or systems of states and indeed transcend that spectrum. I do so by resurrecting republican traditions of political theory formulated before the ascendance of the state as the lens through which we understand and evaluate political life. These traditions are taken from classical authors, such as Aristotle, Polybius and Cicero, and from early modern ones including Machiavelli, Christian Wolff, Leibniz, Montesquieu and James Madison. They are combined with modern systems theory in order to create a framework for analysing political life and forms of rule without having recourse to the state as an analytical lens. This is used to study three historical forms of rule: the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1648–1763), the United States of America (1776–1865) and the European Union (1957–2010). In order to understand the organizational logics and political purposes of the three entities, this book analyses them as variants of an ideal type, the compound republic. On the basis of republican political theory and the analogies between the three historical cases, I explore alternatives to “state-building” in the Third World. The result of this strategy is to dislocate the state, to move it from the centre stage of political analysis. It is important to do so because the state obscures four general phenomena central to the disciplines of history, sociology, political science and international relations (IR). These factors are not only important to the world of academia, but to 1

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the worlds of international politics and military strategy. A) By positing itself as the political organization par excellence in world politics, the state obscures what it is a case of. With the help of republican political theory and modern institutionalism we can disaggregate the state and see that it is a particular configuration of rights and duties. Removing the state from its position as a generic description of political organization, the book presents a new theory to conceptualize and compare different political organizations as “forms of rule.” A combination of a republican ontology of politics and modern systems theory enables us to discern how forms of rule are clusters of institutions, rules and logics of action, clusters that can coexist in a systemic milieu. This substitutes a conception of system- environment for one where systems of rules coexist in each others’ environment. This conception dissolves the distinction between inside and outside, domestic and international and enables analyses of how political and material factors affect the viability of different forms of rule. B) The state as a dominant paradigm in political science makes it difficult to understand or even conceptualize entities in European history that do not conform to the distinction state–system of states. Entities like the Holy Roman Empire and the EU are either reduced to variants of the state or condemned as incomplete or even failed versions of the state. In fact, both have a completely different political purpose than the sovereign state and a system of sovereign states. Indeed, using the state as a generic and timeless analytical category makes it difficult to understand the formation of the state itself. C) The political organization of the contemporary Western World, primarily with regard to the European Union and its nestedness in the Atlantic system, is centred on the United States. Viewing the EU through the lens of the state entails that we either see a collection of states, an odd and badly functioning pseudo-state or a political entity sui generis. Therefore its political purpose and its operational logics as well as its similarities to other historical forms of rule are obscured. A rigid inside/outside distinction prevents us from analysing how the EU is nested in other systems and how these systems sustain its viability. The state as a normative ideal obscures risks to the EU and the impetus to push the European Union in the direction of becoming a unitary actor risks destroying it. If we want to retain the EU in its present form as a relatively stable system of

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Introduction 3

autonomous member states we have to accept that it will not be able to act internationally in an efficient way. D) With the state as an analytical lens we are reduced to viewing alternative and/or dysfunctional forms of rule in the third world as “failed states.” Correspondingly, our chief prescription is “state-building.” With a framework that transcends the spectrum state–system of state, other diagnoses as well as remedies are possible. Central problems of security and political organization in some “failed states” resemble those of the HRE, the USA and the EU – attempts to form states are drivers of conflict, but division into several autonomous states may create a volatile system. Instead, republican arrangements that combine autonomy, protection and restraint of distinct territorial units are necessary. The ideal type of compound republic is central to these arguments. Its political purpose is to safeguard the liberty and material security of its members. Variants of this ideal type have appeared in eras and areas of world history where attempts to form a single state out of many distinct units have been resisted and proved unfeasible. At the same time, the prospect of these units forming a system of sovereign states would be too unstable and would generate wars. As a security solution the compound republic rejects both alternatives. As a form of rule it is characterized by: (a) several centres that, crucially, have authority over their own means of organized violence; (b) a constitution that balances different principles of government as well as the distinct component units against each other; (c) a tension between the liberty of the constituent units and the need to restrain this liberty in order to safeguard their survival vis-à-vis each other; and (d) a tension or even direct conflict between maintaining the liberty of the parts and being an effective and cohesive actor in international politics. This model enables the move from theoretical and historical descriptions to identification and study of organizational logics of action in this form of rule. Compound republics seek to avoid three threats. “Tyranny” is the concentration of power to a single centre, which would destroy the liberty of the component units. “Oligarchy” is a concentration of power to the strongest members which threatens the smaller members. “Anarchy” is armed conflict between the component units. A number of institutions are created to restrain the freedom of the units but still allow considerable autonomy. When a republic tries to act against external threats, it risks “tyranny” and “oligarchy” as joint action presupposes

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concentration of power. As a compound republic is explicitly or implicitly designed to prevent centralization it is caught in a conflict between internal stability and external action. There are several ways to counter this deadlock, including provisions that make the concentration of power temporary or limited in other respects. The compound republic can also be stabilized by an external actor that guarantees the constitution, the security of the members or provides assistance. The republic thereby becomes dependent on the external protector who could choose to divide the republic instead of supporting it. This book analyses three forms of rule which were analogous with respect to the way they organized the relations between the members, their relations to external systems and with regard to their problems in acting in world politics. In many other respects, such as economics or the extent of democratic franchise, they are quite different. The three cases were variants of an ideal type. Max Weber (1978: 14) defined an ideal type as an abstract type that captures general traits from the point of view of the research that is being carried out. Hence, the type is significant from a specific point of view but not from others. The questions dealt with in this book have been addressed in several kinds of literature and debates, but these have not sufficiently interacted with each other. Most of the criticism against the concept of the state has been theoretical but not hitherto been based on historical and empirical studies. The similarities between the Holy Roman Empire and the European Union have been suggested by Deudney (1995) and Watson (1997) but not so far empirically analysed. This book is not the first to have used republican political theory in International Relations (IR). Nicholas Onuf, Frank Klink and Daniel Deudney have all done so and greatly advanced our discipline. The past decade has seen some innovative ways of conceptualizing the European Union, its political purpose and its problems. Zielonka (2006) and Beck and Grande (2007) stand out for their theoretical boldness. So far, however, few works have attempted to create a new understanding of the EU in the realm of foreign and security policy on the basis of empirical comparisons with historical entities of a similar kind. There is a wealth of books dealing with the foreign and security politics of the EU. However, analyses of the EU in relation to security politics have often been descriptive and conducted within limited theoretical and historical perspectives, and little has been done in terms of historical comparisons. As this literature is close to policy analysis it remains disconnected from fundamental sociological debates about the state and other forms of rule. As a consequence, these analyses can offer apt

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Introduction 5

diagnoses, for instance that the EU is often paralyzed in international politics, but offer little guidance in terms of understanding underlying causes. The standard argument is that the EU needs to acquire state-like institutions for international efficiency. This book demonstrates why this will be difficult and why attempts to do so would risk the stability of the EU. Instead of seeing the EU negatively as discontinuous with the state tradition this book understands it as continuous with another, older, tradition in European history. The rest of this book is organized according to the following plan. Chapter 1 outlines how the state has gone from a controversial normative-prescriptive programme in the sixteenth century to an unquestioned analytical- descriptive lens in the twentieth. It answers the question of what the state is a case of by outlining a framework in which many different forms of rule, from empires to states to statessystems, compound republics and feudal organizations can be analysed on terms that are not the state’s. Chapter 2 outlines the compound republic as an ideal type of a form of rule. Based on the normativeprescriptive programme of republican political philosophy, it is an ideal type based on a security analysis opposed to the Hobbesian solution to the problem of order. Chapter 3 analyses the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (HRE), its political purpose, its main institutions, its connections to systems in the environment and the conditions of its viability. It traces a long history that shows that the compound republic traits of the HRE faded when its external protector disappeared and eventually corroded as a political system. The consequences were a long-term loss of liberty and material security for all but its two most militarily powerful members, Austria and Prussia. Chapter 4 analyses the United States of America (USA) between 1776 and 1865. It argues that federalism created a parallel system of action that nested and outflanked the states. During this era the USA differed from unitary states but its internal dynamics and tensions were different from those of the HRE and the EU. Most importantly, the USA did not share the HRE’s and the EU’s problems in relation to external action. Chapter 5 analyses the European Union (EU) as a compound republic whose political purpose is to safeguard the liberty and material security of its members, the states. The United States has stabilized the EU by providing explicit and implicit guarantees for the security of all European states. This chapter demonstrates that it is only possible for the EU to act in world politics with regard to matters of war and peace in connection with the United States and NATO since it guarantees the internal balance in the EU. Chapter 6 turns to the question of failed states,

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primarily in Afghanistan and Somalia but to some extent also in Iraq. On the basis of the theoretical and empirical insights in previous chapters it explores how republican commonwealths could be alternatives to “state-building” in these countries. The conclusions summarize the book with particular regard to comparisons between the three compound republics and to the implications for international theory of the perspective presented in this book.

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1 The Fiction of the State as the Good, Natural and the Beautiful

1.1 The state from prescriptive polemics to a descriptive grid To say that we live in a world of states today is a truism. We also live in the world of the state if we consider the mental map of politics that dominates most thinking, debate and research on politics. The state is not just an object of research; it is the tool with which we understand politics. Having the state not only as a concept in politics but also as a precondition of politics provides a powerful heuristic organizing mechanism for doing and analysing politics; generations of advances in political science provide powerful testimony to that. Nonetheless, it obscures several aspects of socio-political life once we go before or beyond the world of states. From the viewpoint of this book the source of these problems is that the state originated as a normative-political project to quell religious and civil war in sixteenthcentury Europe and to counter what were seen as injustices and inefficiencies caused by the power of estates and other intermediary bodies. As this normative ideal has supported the dominance of what, expressed as abstractly as possible, is a particular configuration of institutions (e.g. the state), prescriptive theory/ideology has transmuted into an analytical lens which today forms the basis of much of political science, law and sociology. Not only is the state widely regarded as the best form of rule, but in many respects also as the only possible one. To understand and conceptualize forms that are radical alternatives to the state and systems of state, we must understand and conceptualize what the state is a case of. The aim of this chapter is not to declare the state redundant, either as an analytical concept or as a form of rule. In many cases the state seems to be in good, not to say rude, health and indeed should be. However, 7

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the state and the states-system as analytical starting-points create distinct problems in relation to central topics of historical inquiry and pressing issues of the contemporary security agenda. The creation of the state as a mode of analysis Despite the recurrent attempts to declare it dead or moribund, the state as a form of organization dominates political life (e.g. Van Creveld 1999, Strange 1996, Krasner 1999). It also dominates our ways of thinking about politics since so much of the vocabulary of political analysis derives from the state, and modern political thought moves in trajectories that presuppose the state or a world of states as the space of politics (Bull 2002). The state and the states-system presuppose each other and should be seen as two parts of the same order (Giddens 1985: 263–264, Walker 1993). The position of the state is unproblematic for some areas of political science, but it creates serious problems for the study of alternative forms of rule, the EU and state failure/state-building. It is claimed that the dominance of the state over political science is so total that we cannot think of politics without it. Indeed, attempts to declare its death or redundancy may actually sustain or even strengthen it. Over the following pages I will nevertheless disaggregate it to find out what social reality the state is composed of and masks through its claims of being universal, timeless and/or generic. Once able to formulate what the state is a case of, we can then conceptualize and proceed to analyse other cases that are radically different from the state and the statessystem. “A compulsory political organisation with continuous operations will be called a ‘state’ insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order” (in Mann 1993: 55). Max Weber’s definition of the state, focusing on the legitimate monopoly of violence, has become canonical in much of political science and International Relations (IR) (Hobden and Hobson 2001, Walker 1993). The Weberian understanding of the state has also dominated historical sociologies of state formation with substantial influence on IR theory (Hobden 1998: 175–178, Buzan and Little 2000). The state as the generic form of political organization is evident in the way that Charles Tilly, the doyen of state-formation theory, defines empires, systems of fragmented sovereignty and empires as variants of “the state” (Tilly 1992: 15, 21). However, the state has, despite the common assumptions in IR that it is perennial (Osiander 2007), a comparatively short history. Over the past decades much has been done to historicize the state, by tracing its

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The Fiction of the State as Good, Natural and Beautiful 9

genesis (Bartelson 1995), by debunking the “myth” that it was created ex nihilo at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (Teschke 2003, Osiander 2001b, Krasner 1993, Duchhart 1998) and rejecting the idea that it is a recurring form of organization with essentially identical features from antiquity to the present (Osiander 2007). The story of the organizational genesis has been told many times and in many guises and does not have to be retold here. For the present purposes it is more relevant to chart, however briefly, another story. The unitary, sovereign state went from a political project in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, over a slow and violent process of establishment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to become an unquestioned analytical grid. In the twentieth century, its status as the organizational form and organizing concept par excellence has become hegemonic and thus its historicity and particularity in many ways invisible. In the vocabulary of organizational theory, it has gone from a normative institution, to a regulatory one (a matter of force and prohibition) to a cognitive one (a matter of perception and ordering) (Scott, W Richard 1995: 35ff). The state’s trajectory from a programme claiming to be the optimal form of rule to the position as the only possible form of rule began at its very inception. Jean Bodin was the first to formulate the modern understanding of sovereignty. In a manner revolutionary for his time Bodin understood sovereignty as “absolute and perpetual power over citizens and subjects in a commonwealth” (Stolleis 1988: 173). His views were favourably received in his native country and would supply absolutist reforms and governments with an invaluable arsenal of arguments in later centuries (Franklin 2003: x). Sovereignty was absolute power, not in the sense of total but final and ultimate (Lake 2009: 46). Consequently, sovereignty was logically indivisible (Onuf 1998: 122–123, Gordon 1999: 4, Franklin 1973: 61). Later the view that sovereignty was indivisible was echoed by Hugo Grotius. Thomas Hobbes equated authority with sovereignty which similarly led to the conclusion that it was indivisible. Bodin wrote his legendary work Six Livres de la République in 1576, during the religious wars that threatened to dissolve France. His aim was to provide the grounds to settle conflicts over authority legally and provide security by giving one and only one centre effective capabilities to command, control and coerce. Hobbes wrote Leviathan during similar circumstances in 1651 when civil war ravaged England. His aims were similar : creating security through a new constitutional arrangement. Both authors combined a normativepolitical programme with an analytical one that argued simultaneously that authority should be unitary and that it could not be anything but

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unitary. Sovereignty is a claim to authority (Bartelson 1995) that has become naturalized as a factual statement about authority. This constitutes the starting-point of the problem where the state is seen not only as the optimal but also as the only form of political organization. Theorists on the relations between European realms soon followed and began to define these relations as relations between sovereign states. Hugo Grotius defined sovereignty in principle as indivisible, but conceded that in practice it is flexible, divisible and malleable (Lake 2009: 47). Until the twentieth century the view of sovereignty was more nuanced with theorists often taking Grotius’ pragmatic viewpoint (Lake 2009: 47–51). It was, however, a more rigid formal-legal understanding in the shape of an a priori assumption about actual relations that was to find its way into the study of politics and international relations. One of the most influential figures in international law, Vatell, who wrote his treaty Le Droit des gens in 1758, was instrumental in turning what had originally been a project for order into the only possible description of order. He was widely read and had a profound influence on the statessystem of Europe (Grewe 2000: 287). Vatell’s system was created in opposition to the thought of Christian Wolff. Wolff was working in an older tradition that saw all human communities as arranged in an ascending corporate structure that extended upwards to the highest association, the Civitas Maxima that encompassed all states (Bartelson 2009: 142–143, Onuf 1998: 71, Grewe 2000: 358–360). This vertical arrangement had a rector, a spiritual leader who, importantly, did not hold power over lower-order organizations. True, the rector had authority, but this was not equated with indivisible sovereignty. Indeed the Civitas Maxima was not a hierarchical arrangement like a state, since power was neither indivisible, absolute, nor final. Emmerich de Vattel could not accept an understanding of authority as divisible and power as shared and it is not clear whether he could understand it either. Vattel rejected the Civitas Maxima because he misinterpreted Wolff as claiming that the rector should have absolute command power. Instead, working with a unitary conception of power, he argued that states are sovereign in their relation and – more importantly for future international studies – cannot be anything but. Either they possess command power and are hence sovereign, or they do not and then are part of another sovereignty. By this move the exclusivity of the states-system of state spectrum was created. The reduction of previously existing forms of authority to one single one led, logically, to the conclusion that the bundle of different kinds of power could not be split and reconfigured in other ways than the sovereign state. Parsons (1968: 94) criticized Hobbes

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by arguing that a particular normative project (the state as an answer to the state of nature) has been interpreted as a description of fact. Hence, the career of the state has inverted Hume’s problem: whether “ought” statements can be derived from “is.” The assertive “is” has successfully over the centuries been established from Bodin and Hobbes’ early modern “ought.” The element upon which this matrix hinges is the identification of authority with sovereignty and the transition from the argument that authority and sovereignty ought to be indivisible to the assumption that they are. Pluralism’s objection is that authority exists in many places on different levels in the state as well as in society (Smith, Martin 2006: 21–38). Although valid, it is beside the point in this case because pluralism does not touch upon the specific form of authority that early state theorists were concerned with and which lies at the heart of not only the state project but indeed any political order: authority and control over the means of large-scale violence. Possession of the capabilities for organized violence on a large scale and the authority to use them is considered by many social thinkers as fundamental to the exercise of political authority (see Poggi 2006). Classically, this is formulated in Hobbes (1957: chapter XVIII, 113–120, especially 116–117). Carl Schmitt sees the essence of politics as the distinction between friend and enemy, an authoritative decision intimately connected to the means of organized violence or war (2007: 26, 28–29, 30–34, 37). Similarly the locus of final power is the capacity to make decisions on, and probably in, the most extreme emergencies (Schmitt 1985: 5–15). This does not mean that politics is just about warfare or that other kinds of politics are epiphenomenal. Rather, “as an ever present possibility it is the leading presupposition which determines in a characteristic way human action and thinking and thereby creates a specifically political behaviour” (Schmitt 2007: 34). Seeing the political as intimately tied to the latent or active use of high-intensity force does not necessarily entail a view that this authority and these capabilities must be located in one place for a polity to exist. The state is a particular configuration of this element of political life, not the configuration thereof. The assumption that the latter is the case lies at the heart of the spectrum state-system of states and it undergirds the idea that this spectrum is exclusive and exhaustive. This spectrum, alternatively formulated as federation–confederation, is carried over in the reified dichotomy between domestic politics as characterized by “hierarchy” and international politics as characterized by “anarchy” – and nothing may exist between or beyond the two

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conditions (Lake 2009: 24–28). This forms the boundaries of conventional political imagination. However, several entities in world history as well as problems of contemporary security cannot be reduced to this “either/or” choice and that is where our troubles begin. The shadow of the state over the EU, European history and state failure A classic question in the study of the EU is what kind of entity it is (Caporaso 1996). The equally classical range of main answers falls back upon the division between state and states-system. The spectrum of classical European integration theory consists of the three schools of intergovernmentalism, federalism (see Scharpf 1966, Nicolaidis and Howse eds. 2001) and (neo)functionalism (Rosamond 2000: 107). Intergovernmentalism and liberal institutionalism (Moravcsik 1993) sees the EU as sets of agreements between sovereign nation-states; federalism sees the EU as being transformed into a polity resembling federal states through intensifying supranationalism. Neofunctionalism’s central thesis is that the EU is integrating and eventually will become increasingly like a unitary state on a higher level by logics inherent in the supranational institutions and through “spillover” (Mitrany 1966). This school tends to stress that the EU is a phenomenon sui generis that cannot be subjected to comparative study. The first two approaches centre on comparisons between the EU and the unitary form of state, often concluding that the former is an incomplete or even failed version of the latter (Hill 1993). Risse-Kappen (1996b: 57) has suggested that intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism both elaborate with the Weberian concept of state, enjoying internal and external sovereignty. The limitations of traditional state discourses are most evident in the neofunctionalist versus intergovernmentalist debate (Rosamond 2000: 105–106) but the conceptual bias towards the unitary state also marks the federalist–confederalist debate. Schmitter (1996) and Sbragia (1992) make similar points and blame understandings of the state originating within traditional IR. Federalism is sometimes understood as an alternative to unitary states because of the territorial devolution of powers (Elazar 1991: XII). However, it does not break out of the spectrum state-system of states because few, if any, federations devolve and share authority over the means of violence between its units. Unless the means of violence are decentralized but a common polity exists, federations remain but variants of states. Similarly confederations are often seen teleologically as halfway houses on the way to fully-fledged federalism (Friedrichs 1968: 11–12). Conceptions

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of the EU as a consociation (Chryssochoou 2001: 146) also lack explicit theorization of the means of violence. We will see below that similar difficulties have plagued attempts to understand the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and to some extent antebellum USA. Observers who have seen that its members retained the means of organized violence have simply concluded that it must be, in all but name, a system of states. In sum, the mutual exclusiveness of the spheres state/domestic and system of states/international means that attempts to understand such entities through the state reduce them to either of these forms which is misleading. The position of the state as not only the best but in fact the only possible form of order resounds throughout debates on state failure and state-building. As will become evident in Chapter 6, the inability to see any kind of order outside the state leads scholars and politicians alike to disregard the lack of positive capacities of statehood in some acute cases and keep on insisting on maintaining the fiction of the state. It also results in an inability to see actual forms of order that emerge and identify statelessness with chaos. Controlling the means of violence is seen as central to successful survival in the international realm defined as “anarchical,” and control has been equated with the institutional form of the state. The assertion that the state is the only viable institutional form is reflected throughout debates on the capacities which the EU needs in order to be a capable international actor. Several explanations of the EU’s inability to act cohesively in international politics centre on its lack of control over armed forces and the ability to wage war and make peace (Hill 1993: 316–317, Zielonka 1998). The debate is dominated by assumptions that the EU will have or must have the same goals as a unitary state or a collection of states (Holland 1995, Spencer 2001, Smith, Michael 1996, Jørgensen 1997, Hannay 2000). The matrix state-system of states harbours a conception of systems in which closed systems act vis-à-vis an environment through certain specified channels. This is reflected in analyses of our three areas of concern. Historical institutional viability is explained as internal capacities to adapt to the environment. Many accounts use endogenous factors to account for why the EU can or cannot act in international politics. EU institutions or intra-EU dynamics between member states, either mediated by EU institutions or not, play a decisive role in these explanations. This reflects a bias similar to that of IR and state-formation theory. It is in part due to a conception of system–environment relations that sees units as discrete and delimitable from an environment

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and not as dependent upon “external” factors for what they are and what they do. In contrast, external actors as well as systems must be included in the analysis. Studies that deal with EU–environment interaction are however beset with problematic assumptions of the EU being a closed system in relation to a unitary environment. (Rosamond 2000: 183–184). The assumption of the EU as a closed system acting upon or reacting to an environment is found in studies on the EU and globalization as well as on security politics. As Rosamond points out, most of the latter “make a sharp distinction between the EU and the outside” (Rosamond 2000: 183), which only works if globalization is seen as an external factor upon which the EU reacts. It becomes problematic if the EU and its member states are seen as integral to globalization, perhaps even fostering it. Just as European economies cannot be seen as separate from the global economy, European political and military dynamics are (sometimes) part of global, or at least Eurasian, dynamics. Certainly the USA and the Soviet Union are/were external to the EC/EU countries and may be treated as such but things become more complex if external systems are considered. NATO or the Cold War cannot be seen as external to the EC/EU countries since most members are members of NATO or were participants in the Cold War. NATO and the EU may be separate systems but one of the two cannot be treated as internal to the member states and the other external. Instead both must be treated as both external and internal to the member states. Most studies of the EU in international politics see it as a system in an international environment characterized by anarchy and by selfhelp and self- enclosed and rationalistic power-maximizing actors. This means that the valuable insights of constructivist and institutional theory are discarded and the dichotomy between the domestic and the international is reproduced. The difference is that the EU is assumed to be an entity within which “domestic” politics are pursued, whereas the international environment is still anarchic. The EU challenges not only IR through the special relations between its member states but also the divide between political science and IR through its multiperspectival external relations. EU members as well as the EU as a whole conduct relations with external actors. This calls for a merger of constructivist or institutionalist studies of intra-EU politics with constructivist studies of international politics. The key is to dismantle the assumptions that political systems exist vis-à-vis an environment with which they communicate or that systems exist in hierarchical systems–subsystems relations. Instead Ruggie’s (1993) idea of a multiperspectival polity could be applied to dismantle

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the inside/outside or system/environment distinction. This entails a systems ontology that posits parallel and nested systems. Jachtenfuchs, Diez and Jung’s (1996: 3) suggests that the modern systems theory, primarily as developed by Niklas Luhmann, is not necessarily tied to the dichotomy between international and domestic systems. The critique of state-centrism The pedigree of criticizing the state, throwing it out, declaring it redundant is very long (Bartelson 2001). It is not necessary for the purposes of this book to retrace these trajectories of criticism in full. Rather, I will concentrate on some of the more promising alternative suggestions. Giddens’ criticism of Weber’s concept of the state shows how deep the problem of viewing all kinds of state forms through the modern state runs in the social sciences. The concept is too much based on historically specific circumstances which are then read backwards in time (Giddens 1985: 18). As a consequence “it tends to minimize differences between traditional and modern states in respect to the very features he singles out” (Giddens, 1985: 18, 27). In response to Weber, Giddens (1985: 20) reformulates a definition that will be able to cover a wider historical spectrum by casting it as “a political organization whose rule is territorially ordered and able to mobilize the means of violence to sustain that rule ... but does not accentuate a claimed monopoly of violence or the factor of legitimacy.” Mann (1995: 37) differentiates the concept of state by defining it as: “a differentiated set of institutions and personnel embodying centrality, in the sense that political relations radiate to and from a centre, to cover a territorially demarcated area over which it claims a monopoly of binding and permanent rule-making, backed up by physical violence.” According to Shaw (2000: 189) this definition allows for “both competing and overlapping ‘states’ within a given geographical area.” If the state is thus disaggregated and reformulated based on a concept of political power, or authority, rather than on legal discourses then it is possible that “just as there can be multiple layers of society and culture, there can be a layering of state” (Shaw 2000: 189). Similarly Caporaso (1996: 31) has devised the concept “forms of state” in an attempt to “suggest ... that there is no such thing as a ‘state,’ or even a ‘modern state’ or ‘nation-state’, with trans-historical and crosssocietal significance.” It has been suggested that a way out of the cul-de-sac of only basing the analytical concept of the state on a description of the modern state could be taken by establishing typologies of kinds of state (Watson 1992: 130). Poggi develops a state-formation account that differentiates

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between different forms of state as developmental stages. Starting out from the classical concept of “rule” (Herrschaft) Poggi’s typology includes the “Feudal system of rule,” the “Ständestaat” (the State of the Estates), the “Absolutist system of rule,” the “Nineteenth- Century constitutional state” and the “Liberal state” (Poggi 1978). The most conceptually challenging form of rule of Poggi’s typology is the Ständestaat since it breaks with ideas of unity that underlie the later three forms. Its organizing principle, “dualism,” contradicts the ideal of indivisible sovereignty since the territorial ruler and the Stände [estates] make up the polity jointly, but as separate and mutually acknowledged political centers. Both constitute it, through their mutual agreement; but even during the agreement’s duration they remain distinct, each exercising powers of its own, and differing in this from the “organs” of the mature “unitary” modern state ... it was as the two halves of a single system of rule that the Stände and the ruler came together. Together they generated ... a single “field of rule” traversed by a unitary political process that had its poles in both. (Poggi 1978: 48–49 see further Poggi 1978: 46–51, 73) Dualism “confronted the ruler with the Stände [Estates] and associated the two elements in rule as distinct power centers” (Poggi 1978: 48). Crucially, and in contradistinction to the unitary state, dualism extended to control over the means of violence (Gilbert, Felix 1975: 203, Hintze 1970c: 159). As an ideal type, the Ständestaat separates authority from its legal justification, sovereignty, and acknowledges its embodiment in two parts of the same polity. This ideal type is exceptional, and in the context of contemporary political science, revolutionary, since the authority and capabilities over the means of violence are shared but the two halves remain parts of the same polity, united by a common political good. If we take the Ständestaat seriously as a form of its own rather than just viewing it through the lens of the unitary state, it clearly has a very different political purpose, the most important manifestation of which is dualism. Historical systems of states have different purposes (Reus-Smit 1999: 3–39) and it could be argued that different forms of rule also serve distinct purposes. The historical variance of institutional/constitutional arrangements and justificatory ideologies gives us reason to believe so. The purpose of the Ständestaat was not centralization of authority and the means of violence and the hierarchical arrangement of power

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relations. Rather its purpose was to combine the efficiency and security of the single polity and the freedom and distinctiveness of its parts. It could be seen as resembling confederations but it differed from these by dividing authority over the means of violence. This discovery raises the question of what the consequences of this kind of variation are on a systemic level. In their different ways, Watson (1992), Osiander (2001a) and Teschke (2003) address the question by demonstrating the variance in international systems through history. The following chapters will investigate the systemic consequences of the coexistence of different forms of rule and demonstrate that a symbiosis of forms of rule resembling the Ständestaat, like the European Union and the Holy Roman Empire, and system- dominant hegemons, like the United States, is strong and stabilizing. Poggi’s classification is helpful since it helps us to understand the distinct forms of state and state formation. However, the typology does not inform us on how differences in internal forms account for differences in relations between more or less territorially bounded units of rule. Although differentiated definitions of the concept of state that allow for the establishment of typologies constitute advances, the emphasis on discontinuities is too strong and sharp in Giddens’ (e.g. 1985: 1, 49–50, 57, 53ff, 192, 228) and Poggi’s accounts. Such accounts tend towards the evolutionary and do not allow for the simultaneous existence and coexistence of different forms of rule. Due to their linearity, they also have difficulties accounting for the conditions of viability for different forms of rule. It is possible to start out from them and envision periods (and places) in world history where different forms overlap and interact with each other. To get behind the state, as it were, even more sophisticated definitions are not enough. Instead we must ask: what is the state a case of? In a very pure form, the state is a case of rule. A framework is needed that can recognize differences and analyse shifts but also survivals and the parallel existence of forms of rule and their implications for action between them. This is necessary in order to understand “forms of rule” that are usually divided by sovereignty or by the concept of state. A framework that allows for variations within the concept of state is a step forward, but retaining the concept of state still restricts its usefulness. Employing the term “rule” leads us towards the study of different kinds of authority which, as argued above, is distinct from and should not be confused with sovereignty (Deudney 1995: 198). Using rule provides a distance from the paradigm that identifies the authority with indivisible sovereignty. As seen above, multiple centres of authority that are

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not hierarchically ordered have been associated with systems of states, whereas multiple centres of authority that are hierarchically ordered have been equated with states. Hence I will use “forms of rule” as a generic term. This concept is used by both Giddens (1985: 57) and Poggi (1978), ultimately going back to Max Weber’s concept of Herrschaft. Two moves enable the comparative study of forms mistakenly reduced to “states” or “systems of states.” Disaggregating forms of rule in their component parts, such as constitutional arrangements and ideological institutions, enable us to understand them in terms of the relations of authority that the system prescribes between the components. Within such a framework the uniqueness of the forms that are now divided into either “states” or “systems of states” can be comprehended on their own terms. The “mixed polities” or mixed constitutions of republican political thought dealt with in the next chapter are such cases. In this category we may distinguish between systems with shared and divided structures of authority (e.g. structures characterized by “dualism”; see Poggi 1978: 48–49) and central structures of authority ordering relations hierarchically. The kind of multiplicity associated with the former kind are usually conceptualized in terms of “overlapping” spheres of authority, governance or rule (e.g.”layers of state”; see Shaw 2000: 189) and are sometimes grouped under labels such as “medieval” or “neomedieval” (Bull 2002). In order to answer what the state is a case of and then proceed to conceptualize alternatives to it, we must now go on to analyse the components of rule and action.

1.2 Rule, rules and relations before states: republican systems theory Rule and order As noted above, traditionally political science and IR theory have reified the state. Although true, there is a risk of similarly reifying all possible alternatives to the state unless we continue to ask: what is the state, as well as any other form, a case of? A more foundational distinction than the one between statist and non-statist forms of analysis is that between “relationist” and “substantialist” theories. In the former relations precede entities both ontologically and as an analytical priority. The latter reifies substance and gives analytical and ontological priorities to entities (Jackson and Nexon 1999). A relationist ontology is expressed by Nicholas Onuf (1989: 195) as: “political society, with rules and rule, normative considerations and asymmetric relations, is everywhere.” Onuf draws on republican thought from before the state ascended to

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its position as a naturalized and reified way of bounding relations. A similar point is made by Mann (1995: 1–33), although using modern sociological thought to see networks of interaction as ontologically and chronologically prior to ways of bounding and controlling them, such as states or territorial empires. Before we can discuss how different forms of rule work we must investigate the elements of which they are aggregates. The framework developed in this chapter is in the tradition of “systems of action theory” focused on human action and the direction thereof. This makes it distinct from a structural systems theory (Waltz 1979, Buzan and Little 2000) where entities and arrangements precede relations and actions. Naturally, the system of action theory has been expanded since its original development in the 1950s and 1960s by Talcott Parsons’ time by the linguistic turn, here represented by Searle and his work on institutions, as well as by the new institutionalism in organization theory (Powell and DiMaggio 1991). Human societies consist of rule-guided behaviour. Institutions determine action by containing rules and meaning (through their foundational ideas) according to which actors structure their world. In a more concrete sense, institutions contain the ideas and rules from which identities are constructed, interests are defined and actions are prescribed. Hence the influence of institutions is constitutive rather than causal – or, in Aristotelian terms, “material” rather than “effective” causation (Wendt 1999: 165). March and Olsen (1989: 23) argue that in politics action is driven by the normative implications of identities and by the identification of situations within a conceptual scheme that connects them to appropriate action. These two parts make up the “logic of appropriateness.” Institutions and the identities built on them enable the performance of certain actions but they also prescribe certain ones and prohibit others. Jackson and Nexon (1999: 302–304) use “process” in a similar way, as factors that enable, prohibit and prescribe certain courses of action. To qualify as such, all rules must be able to be articulated in language and so must action that relates to rules, either in the act of following or in the act of breaking (Onuf 1989: 78–79). Not only is it possible to verbalize rule-guided action, it also takes place through language. In other words, language is the medium of action (Taylor 1985: 34, Searle 1995). In contrast to ordinary language theory which sees language as representing reality, speech act theory and performative language theory see language as constitutive of reality. If rules are performative, then it follows that so are institutions and by extension, social systems. A consequence of this line of reasoning is that several

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systems may exist parallel to one another and that actors can switch between them (Luhmann 1995: 181–182). A social ontology based on this insight is outlined below. The rules that institutions contain make speech acts possible and meaningful. There are five different kinds of speech acts: assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declarations (Onuf 1989: 87). Of the five kinds of speech acts only assertives, directives and commissives are able to create rules. In other words, all rules always have the character of one of these three kinds: “all rules are either assertives of the form, I state that X counts as Y, or directives of the form, I state that X person (should, must, may) do Y, or commissives of the form, I state that I (can, will, should) do Y” (Onuf 1989: 90). If a social system is understood as being composed of a set of relations between its members, it is possible to cast these relations in the form of what actions can be performed between members as well as between members and non-members. These possibilities are, in turn, rules stipulating what members may and may not do, what may and may not be done to them as well as the nature of their mutual ties. In the language of political or legal theory these relations are understood as rights, duties and obligations. If institutions are constitutive of entities and determine relations between the entities that make up a group, then changes in the institutions alter the character of the relations between the units. Hence changes in the institutions that define an entity also entail changes in the relations between entities of the same kind. In other words, the (unitary, sovereign) state and the international system (seen as the prevalent practices) are co- constituted (Jackson and Nexon 1999: 311, Giddens 1985: 263–264, Walker 1993). By extension it is possible to argue that definitions of an entity that depart even further from sovereign unitary states, whether “absolutist” or modern, will generate practices among entities that differ even more from those of the sovereign inter-state system. In sum, a system will define the character of the units as well as the relations between units. It does so not only through the relations of the units to each other or through the institutional set-up of the units, but through intersubjective meanings. The reason why systems determine action differently is that they are different contexts of intersubjective meaning. This context dependence works on two levels. First, the rules that an institution creates depend on the composition of ideas that create the institution. Second, the way that a system determines action, its “logic of action,” depends on the composition of its institutions. This reasoning about meaning is familiar from hermeneutical philosophy as well as from the German Begriffsgeschichte

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school of conceptual history (Brunner et al. 1972–1997). The meaning of a concept is given by a context – which we can characterize as a “field” – in which it exists together with other concepts (Fay 1996: 142). Thus the introduction of new concepts into a field alters its composition and thereby the meaning of all concepts in it (Koselleck 1990: xxxxii). This means that although two institutions are built on some of the same ideas they will create different rules because other ideas have given them different meaning. On the next level, although two systems may be similar in respect to some institutions, they will on the whole direct action in very different ways because their total composition differs. Given the fact that several systems may exist parallel to each other, actors may be inclined to switch from one to the other if the systems resemble each other in terms of foundational ideas. The composition of their institutions may, however, differ and hence direct action in completely different ways. Consequently, such a switch will entail that different rules may and must be followed. This, as I will argue below, may have considerable effects on its capacities to survive. There is a connection between the function of an institution and the meaning of the concepts upon which the institution is built. As Onuf (1989: 81) notes “sense and function are strictly co-constitutive.” Since intersubjectivity is central to social interaction, the meaning of an action must be able to be interpreted by other actors (Taylor 1985: 39). In order for a rule to be followed, and indeed for rule-guided behaviour to be possible, the acting subject as well as the audience of the action must be in agreement on the meaning of the rule. Hence the intersubjectively created meaning of an institution, i.e. the concept upon which the institution is built, determines the rules that dictate what can and cannot be done. The function of a certain institution is contingent upon which other institutions it is connected with. This “field dependence” entails that an institution produces certain rules in one system but others in a different system (Onuf 1998: 134). With respect to regulation within a system, rules are not equivalent but some have greater constitutive effect than others (Onuf 1998: 173). It is not always possible to ground systems in a final authoritative institution; some concepts – although themselves dependent upon others – organize the system more than others do. Examples are sovereignty in the modern state and the bond of fealty in the feudal system. Inter-systemic relations Viewing social systems as systems of action and rules has implications for how we view and empirically study world politics, since some

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assumptions of systems theory common to political science and IR are unsustainable. As a consequence of the domestic/international division most approaches in IR see interaction as taking place within a single system that is undifferentiated and equivalent for all participants. The striving of the state towards closure of its boundaries (Hintze 1970a: 122), towards a world of – in principle although not in practice – closed systems prevents us from viewing the socio-political world as consisting of a mileu of non-reified open systems. We saw above how this created a bias towards endogenous factors in explaining the formation of states, the viability of the EU and state failure. This is empirically problematic in all three areas. Buzan and Little (2000) undermine the ideas of a single international system and of a systems/environment distinction by showing that world politics should be conceived of as a systemic milieu in which a multitude of systems exist. Some systems in world history were close or nested within each other; others were more distant and had sporadic contacts; others still were isolated. Hence many systems coexisted that followed different constitutive rules. In the classical world this difference did not have a heavy constitutive impact on intersystemic relations or intra-systemic conditions because of the scarcity of contacts. As systems and communications increased these differences become more important, as we shall see in the empirical chapters that follow. This conception substitutes the system/environment distinction of classical systems theory for one in which the environment of any particular system contains other systems (Luhmann 1995: 181–182, Luhmann 1997: 609–610). Rather than thinking in terms of “the” environment as an undifferentiated space outside the system boundary we have to distinguish between systems in the environment and analyse systemto-system relations. The environment is no longer a residual category but the ways in which boundaries are created and relations to systems in the environment are established and maintained have constitutive effects on each system. In this view, then, including external factors in the analysis of institutional viability as well as failure becomes not only possible, but necessary. Buzan and Little’s study deals with territorial systems in world history but its considerable heuristic potential can be taken further with the addition of modern systems theory and relationist sociology. Giving analytical priority to systems of action rather than to their territorial institutionalization means that they are not necessarily exclusive, fixed or permanent. We now know that boundaries of societies are not the same as the borders of the states which classical sociology assumed,

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gladly affirming the self- description of the national state. Instead social systems can coexist within the same territorial space. An actor may have access to several systems of rule according to which he can choose to act. Political struggles, particularly in times of crises, are competitions over what set of rules should apply to which actor. Since systems consist of practices, boundaries between systems are not fixed or permanent but are themselves maintained through boundary- drawing practices, which are necessary to sustain the system (Jackson and Nexon 1999: 315). Systems of rules and practices are not “naturally” exclusive but can and do coexist in any given area, though not always on an egalitarian basis. In some cases a system may be nested in a higher- order system. Under such conditions some relations within the nested system are regulated by rules and practices formulated within the nesting systems. Or, the relations of the nested system with systems in its environment are regulated through the system in which it is nested. Such relations are not system–subsystem or parts–whole relations because the systems remain distinct.

1.3 Giving shape to action: forms of rule A consequence of the state’s position as our cognitive default setting is that forms on either side of the divide between domestic and international created by the insistence on the indivisibility of sovereignty are seldom, if ever compared. Indeed the very categories that structure our thinking about politics preclude us from doing so. To describe, compare and contrast all kinds of political order a new vocabulary must be assembled. All socio-political systems can be schematically describe and analyse socio-political systems as “forms of rule.” In this way the problem of classification and the concomitant difficulties of capturing the unique traits of entities that are neither “state” nor “system of state” are countered. “Form” derives from Elias’ (1978) concept of “figuration” and is the arrangement of institutions from which rules and hence ruleguided actions stem. The composition of the institutions determines relations between its component parts, which I will call its members. I will use “composition” when talking about institutions within a system and “configuration” when talking about the members of a form of rule. Hence, a form of rule consists of institutions and rules which give rise to the members as well as their configuration. Empires, feudal organizations, modern states, modern systems of states, estate-based states (Ständestaaten), and compound republics may all be understood as forms of rule. They create order by combining rules

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with authority, i.e. they rule by giving rules a unified direction (see Hintze 1970b: 471). As in all systems, the institutions that compose the system contain these rules. For the sake of clarity a distinction must be made between the institutions and members. Institutions are what define the form of rule, i.e. gives it its purpose, its rules and define the identities of the members. Examples are sovereignty in the modern system of states and vassalage in a feudal form of rule. Members are entities with actor-properties that are composed of the institutions of the system. Examples are the states in the system of states, vassals in a feudal organization or the member states of the EU. The rules of the institutions constitute in turn the configuration of the members. The configuration is analytically broken down into four factors: 1) The nature of the members, 2) their relation to each other, 3) their relation to an eventual centre and 4) the relation to external factors (either actors or institutions) of the members and of the polity as a whole. The relations between the members are understood in terms of a tension between autonomy on the one hand and mutual ties on the other (cf. Onuf 1998: 4). This model of a configuration stresses the interconnectedness of the elements; for instance, the degree of inclusiveness of an order depends on how the relations between the members and between the members and the centre are constructed. All forms of rule have normative and moral elements (Parsons 1968: 92). In the language of political theory autonomy is reflected in a member’s rights within the form of rule and ties are reflected in its duties. This tension is captured by three analytical questions: -What can a member do, what must it do and what must it not do in relation to the other party. In other words, enabling, prescribing and prohibiting. Some forms of rule, like the EU and the US, posit their members as equal in terms of rights and duties. Others, like the HRE, create a hierarchy among its members where they have different rights and different duties. The modern states-system is theoretically a highly egalitarian system (inequalities stem primarily from material and political capabilities) whereas a modern state or empire is internally a hierarchical form of rule. One of the most important factors regulated in the configuration is how the authority over the capabilities for organized armed violence is regulated. In some forms of rule this authority is centralized or monopolized whereas in others it is not. This distinction is of great importance due to the centrality of the domain of organized violence/ coercion to politics. Like other systems, forms of rule depend on actions such as the issuing and following of rules (directives, commissives and assertives) for

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their continued existence. As such they are instantiations of performative speech acts. The non-reified nature of these systems give actors a certain choice between different systems and the possibility to alter old ones or to create new ones by reinterpreting institutions and thus rearranging their place in systemic contexts. In other words, in some situations actors find themselves choosing between parallel forms of rule and hence identities and sets of rules. Below I will analyse this kind of relation between the Holy Roman Empire and the European statessystem and between the European Union, the international system and the Atlantic system. Some forms of rule have centres (or central formal institutions), whereas others do not (Scott 2003: 161ff). In the former kind, relations between members and the centre as well as between members are regulated by the central institutions. Elias argued that central organs have “the role as supreme co- ordinator and regulator for the functionally differentiated figuration at large” (Elias 1982: 163). However, central organs or centres should not be confused with the specific role of the central capacities of the modern state. What the central institutions regulate and the power with which they do so differ between different forms of rule. Hence we need to distinguish between the function of central institutions and the power vested in the function (Elias 1982: 165). Secondly, central institutions may or may not have agent properties (Luhmann 1995: 199). In some forms of rule formal central institutions exist but more as forums in which members act, in others they are actors who are sometimes hierarchically superior to other members. All systems are characterized by tensions within their composition of institutions and configuration of members and a functioning system can be said to hold these in balance (Elias 1982: 231–232). Failure to maintain this balance entails that the old one fails to survive and that a new form arises. For example, Elias argues that the formation of ancien régime France depended on the balance between the tension between the noble estate and the third estate. This balance was kept by the central ruler, i.e. the monarch, who needed the institution of noble privileges to uphold it. When these privileges were abolished, the formation collapsed. This illustrates the role played by institutions in enabling certain actors in a formation to manage the balance upon which the formation depends for its political viability (Elias 1982: 179–81, 191– 192). Agent properties may also be held by the system as a whole. Some forms of rule, such as states-systems, lack them whereas others, such as states or empires, possess them (cf. Jackson and Nexon 1999: 307). This means that the form of rule can constitute itself as an actor. This

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does not mean that the actorness needs to be located in a formal central institution. It can be located in its members who agree to act in concert either on a routinely or ad hoc basis.

1.4 Viability and survival Viability and survival are central concerns in IR theory but to analyse the viability of a form of rule must distinguish between material and institutional aspects. Failure to survive in a material sense entails forcible destruction of people, buildings, roads etc. that are the physical members and manifestations of a form of rule, e.g. a state. On the other hand, the survival of a form of rule in an institutional sense is connected to its capacity to regulate action. Of course, destruction of the material factors of a form of rule, for example, the buildings, archives, soldiers, infrastructure, population etc., impair its ability to regulate action in a certain direction. However, this ability can be damaged in other ways than material. In order to analyse the institutional aspects of survival we need to distinguish between two kinds, one general and one specific. I will return to the material aspects below. The general institutional aspect of survival concerns the capacity to regulate action. In this sense we may talk about the survival of, for example France, as a form of rule. The specific aspect concerns the capacity to regulate action in a certain direction, i.e. according the political purposes of a particular kind of form of rule. In this sense we would talk about the survival as a particular form of rule, for example, of France as a republic. Survival in a general sense is not affected by changes in the system’s political purpose or configurations among its members. Indeed, constitutional and political “mutations” may be one way to secure the survival of a form of rule. In such cases the power apparatus remains intact but is run in a different way and to different political ends. An example would be a military coup d’état that changes the purpose of the form of rule but maintains it in the face of internal dissolution or external challenge. On the other hand, survival as a particular form of rule pinpoints political and constitutional aspects and depends exactly on the maintenance of the political purpose. From this point of view the regulation of action to specific political ends are important (Parsons 1968: 92). Failure to survive as a particular form of rule means that the institutions that create rules which regulate action in accordance with certain political ideas are no longer functioning. This means that the polity changes form. As I will explain further below, such a political

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change may also have effects on material survival in the sense that wars become more frequent and destructive. We have seen above that some institutions are more crucial to the upholding of the political purpose of the form of rule (above and Onuf 1998: 173). If these institutions are defunct or are replaced, the form of rule fails to survive. Survival of a form of rule in the specific as well as general institutional senses depends on maintenance of their legitimacy, on success in upholding their political purposes, and on successfully meeting the competition from external factors in the sense of other political ideas and institutions. In this sense a crucial task is upholding the boundary of a form of rule against other systems and ensuring that its rules are followed, not those belonging to another system. One way in which this may occur is that the political purpose and the institutions that direct action towards that end have lost legitimacy. This recalls Arendt’s (1970) idea that not violence itself but what it does to the legitimacy of a society is the cause of revolution. An important aspect of an identity, collective or individual, is its ability to describe the world or to constitute a frame through which the world is interpreted and described. When it no longer is able to do so, it loses its legitimacy and in the case of a collective identity, it can no longer command loyalty. The legitimacy of a political system might also be said to rest on its capacity to describe the world in this sense. When it is no longer capable of doing so, it loses legitimacy and its structures no longer offer resistance even to trivial challenges (Arendt 1970: 49–50). Material factors may contribute to the loss of legitimacy: if the leadership of a form of rule fails to ensure the physical security or economic well-being of its subjects the particular form of rule may become discredited. Historical examples of shifts between kinds of forms of rule after such crises of legitimacy are the substitution of the Roman republic by the Principate, the overthrow of the Italian city-republics by autocratic princes in the fifteenth century and the toppling of the ancien régime in France in 1789. Failure of forms of rule as such to survive are rarer; the fall of the Roman Empire, the absorption of the multistate system in China (the “warring states”) into the Ch’in Empire in 221 BCE or the final partitioning of Poland in 1795 serve as examples. Focusing on legitimacy and fulfilment of political goals as a precondition for survival in an institutional sense entails that careful attention must be paid to intersubjective understandings of events in a form of rule. Only by understanding the world-view of the actors involved can the political reasons for the successful survival of a form of rule, or its demise, be fully understood (Osiander 2001a: 120).

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As outlined above, systems exist in each others’ environment, in egalitarian, hierarchical or nested relations. In some episodes of world history we can discern deliberate attempts to wear down, change or replace the institutions of a particular system or form of rule by, for instance, first nesting distinct systems, then subsuming them. The deterioration of a system does not have to follow a line of intentional corrosion from the outside. It can take the form of a gradual erosion as actors over time follow rules and practices formulated in another system and more or less voluntarily abandon the original system and move towards being subsumed in a system in the environment. In general terms, the trajectory of “intentional corrosion” is more likely to be associated with empires and the trajectory of “voluntary erosion” with historical situations characterized by culturally potent hegemonies. Survival as a form of rule also depends on material factors such as successful defence against external and internal organized violence, i.e. external or civil war. The prospects of the material survival of a form of rule are to a certain extent dependent on the way that its institutions regulate action. This connection is expressed in how actor-properties are created. First I will consider the positive effects of a highly developed actor capability and then the negative ones. The possibilities for action of the members of a system as well as for the system as a whole can determine its prospects for material survival in relation to other systems. In other words, the configuration of a form of rule decides to a certain extent the efficiency of its actor capabilities. Some forms of rule are more effectively organized than others in terms of warfare and diplomacy. This is the classic theme in state-formation literature: that the unitary state allowed more effective concerted action than feudal forms of rule, Ständestaaten and trade leagues (Tilly 1992, Spruyt 1994). However, efficient actor capabilities in the form of rule as a whole or in its members may also have destabilizing effects. These in turn have negative effects on material survival. Since different forms of rule constitute action and the scope of action differently, some create more and worse internal conflicts than others. Technically speaking, they differ in the frequency and intensity of violence that is produced. The concept “violence interaction capacity” refers to the amount and intensity of violence produced in a system (Buzan, Little and Jones 1993). Deudney sees it as determined by “the interplay of unchanging geography and changing technologies of communication, technology and destruction” (Deudney 2000a: 3). I also believe that the capacity for

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autonomous action of the units in a system is a factor in the production of violence. Indeed, institutional factors are also “technologies” in the sense of being able to produce changes in violence interaction capacity. Deudney sees the material and geopolitical factors as the base (in Marxist terms) that determines the viability of different political forms, conceived of as superstructures (Deudney 2000b: 80). In contrast I want to argue that the reverse also holds true, i.e. that the institutional composition of forms of rule can have constitutive effects on the production of violence within as well as between systems. The result can be traced back to how forms of rule regulate the relationship between units and their agency. The varying institutional propensity of different forms of rule to generate large-scale violence has fundamental implications for international security. First, Adam Watson argues, basic institutions of the European states-system, such as intolerance of closer ties between its members, have been a major cause of instability and war. In contrast, a system with a greater acceptance of restricted autonomy of its members might not “produce” warfare to the same degree (Watson 1992: 13–16), Instead of guaranteeing survival, he suggests that hegemonic and counter-hegemonic wars undertaken in attempts to “balance” pose greater threats to individual units as well as to entire systems. Hence a greater tolerance of closer ties between units may be conducive to their viability. The great degree of independence entailed by the concept of sovereignty may thus be a threat to viability rather than a variable that serves it. Given the advantages conferred by larger units and the dangers inherent in systems of separate powers, hybrid forms containing both embedding and authority are perhaps to be preferred to fully independent or autarkic units (Watson 1992: 313– 314). Second, throughout its long period of formation, the state itself brought about tremendous amounts of organized violence as the rich literature on civil wars and rebellions in early modern Europe testifies to. The next chapter argues that one of the major advantages of the compound republic form of rule is that it is able to stabilize large regions due to its restraining of autonomous agent capacities of its members. As Chapters 3 to 5 show, in key places and periods of world history, it prevented the warfare that attempts to create a single unitary state or a states-system would have brought about (or recently did). If we consider the propensity to produce violence of the state and the states-system as forms of rule, then the desirability of “statebuilding” as a strategy for international security becomes doubtful, which is demonstrated in Chapter 6.

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This chapter dived down to the foundations of political life and argued that the state and the states-system are forms of rule. This is what the state is “a case of.” As such the state and the states-system can be stripped of their claims to transhistoricity and universality. The next chapter deals with a form of rule that has appeared in different variants at various points in history as an alternative to the state and the statessystem: the compound republic.

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2 Remedies: The Neglected Heritage of Republicanism

2.1 Republican theories of world politics The state was not always the starting-point of political analysis. From antiquity to the eighteenth century, what we today call republicanism was the dominant body of thought regarding politics within as well as between these units. Republicanism allows us to conceptualize and analyse entities that do not conform to the state-system of state paradigm and understand their role in world politics. Republicanism offers an alternative analytical lens since it proceeds from a political ontology where units are embedded in greater communities without losing their autonomy through integration. These forms of rule are characterized by an understanding of power as divisible and authority as shared. This sharing extends even to what can be considered the foundations of politics, the means of organized violence. Republicanism contrasts to the closed-systems conception that is foundational to much of modern political science, IR, sociology and law. It has more affinities to sociological conceptions of systems as open and nested. Early modern republican thinkers like Leibnitz and Christian Wolff conceptualized the political mileu of mankind as composed of multiple associations and republics each nested in higher- order systems, ultimately encompassing the totality of all humankind. The republican political ontology of ascending corporations made no distinction between and domestic and international politics. In contrast to Emmerich de Vatell, Wolff was considered cryptically abstract and incomprehensible by contemporaries (Grewe 2000: 287). However, seen through the lens of modern systems theory, the systemic conceptions of Wolff and other republicans can now become comprehensible and accessible for empirical analysis. Combining republican political theory 31

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with a model of modern systems theory and forms of rule clarifies its fundamental difference from the state and sovereignty-based analytical framework used in much of the social sciences. This move unleashes the considerable potential in the republican heritage in political thought for IR theory and historical sociology and makes republican political theory operational as an analytical framework. This is necessary to counter the tendency to read republicanism through the lens of the state which reduces it to a theory of devolved powers within a unitary state rather than recognizing it as a radical alternative. Republicanism was not only a way of conceptualizing the units of politics and their relations. It was a normative prescription of political orders, stability and security based on a view of social order as consisting of units that are variably intertwined, enmeshed and embedded with each other. Republicanism as a normative prescription contrasts to the unitary, sovereign and modern state as a political project. As the previous chapter demonstrated, the political project of the state was launched in the seventeenth century as a response to the religious and civil wars. Over the centuries it has become incorporated into the study of politics itself as a foundational assumption. Republican theory allows us to clearly discern the problems of a state- centred science of politics and the limitations of the spectrum states-systems of states and moreover to navigate out of it. I use this political vision, based on a social analysis that does not presuppose an institutional configuration dividing politics into inside/outside or into domestic and interstate orders, to construct an ideal type (Weber 1978), the compound republic. This ideal type is used as a heuristic tool to identify specific traits of the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), the European Union (EU) and the USA in contrast with the state and the states-system, similarly seen as ideal types. There is no difference in kind between the three; they are different “forms of rule,” configurations of authority, legitimacy, institutions and action that order relations between groups, some of which are territorially bounded, in different ways. Daniel Deudney made a pioneering effort in synthesizing republican political theory into a model of analysis which he called “security restraint republicanism” (1995, 2004, 2007). At the core of republican thinking lies the idea of self-restraint in order to avoid internal tyranny and domination (Deudney 2004: 320, 322–323). While building on Deudney’s work, the following framework differs from it by being more based on the Continental republican heritage than on the Atlantic (see Onuf 1998), by incorporating the dualist heritage of the Ständestaat and systems theories allowing us to analytically

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disaggregate units and conceptualize relations in a multi-systemic mileu. Deudney has primarily analysed the American polity, from the founding in the eighteenth century to its pivotal role in the worldsystem of the twenty-first. Similarly Vincent Ostrom’s path-breaking The Political Theory of a Compound Republic (2008) only deals with the American experience. I will show that a republican political theory, fortified by the neglected European sources, has a much broader application as a way of understanding the historical and contemporary cases of this book. What we now call republicanism is a heritage that stretches from classical antiquity, with Aristotle, Sallust, Polybius and Cicero as the major thinkers, over the Renaissance with Machiavelli, and Giacchardini as the major names to the early modern period (c. 1500–1800) with thinkers like Althusius, Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Montesquieu, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. I will not enter into the debate over whether republicanism is a single tradition or not (Pocock 1975, Skinner 1998, Fink 1962: 1–52) but consider republicanism as a field with important commonalities (Onuf 1998). A central aspect of republican thought is that it views social systems as an ascending order of corporations in which authority is distributed unequally and shared among its members. The order of corporations ranged from the basic household unit through realms up to the largest possible corporation, the community of mankind or Christendom. This meant that there was no prima facie distinction between political life within a bounded territorial sphere (such as a state) and political life between them. Both were understood as governed by similar mechanisms and cycles and the same virtues and vices applied. The teaching of multiple orders that were embedded in other orders of increasing size and generality enabled a conception of political life and institutional constructions that was fundamentally different from the binary distinction between domestic/international and its atomistic systems conception. In medieval and early modern Europe the ideational heritage from antiquity combined with existing estate-based institutions that ordered society into ascending corporations where authority was shared and spheres of jurisdiction overlapped to create arrangements that acted as mutually binding on all power holders. The classical emphasis on liberty combined with ideas of inviolable privileges of each estate (which naturally tended to grow the further up in society one went). This was the state of the estates characterized by dualism and aristocratic freedom – the Ständestaat – dealt with in the previous

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chapter. The next chapter will deal with the details of its establishment in the Holy Roman Empire. Leibniz saw the world as consisting of a number of social forms, hierarchically arranged. The state was the fifth and second highest association; above it was the Church of God, below it were husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, and households. The embeddedness of states in political society restrained its rulers. As Riley (1988: 30) notes, “[t]his hierarchy ... locked the state into a system in which it had not the (for Leibniz pernicious) freedom which the Hobbesian state enjoyed.” Associations below the state had to be negotiated with and the universal authorities, although not specified, “were to preserve Europe against the immoderate appetites of any part of it.” As a consequence political life was not divided into either state or systems of states. Instead, “several territories ... can unite into one body, with the territorial hegemony of each preserved intact.” Leibniz was not only talking about the Empire, but he made a general statement which he exemplified with the Empire, “the Swiss body” and “the Dutch Republic” (Leibniz 1988[1677]: 117). As will be recalled from Chapter 1 the Ständestaat divided political powers into two centres. While states usually divide some power, they do not divide power over the authority and means of force. This was done in the Ständestaat, which makes it radically different from a sovereign state. Leibniz incorporated this view in his republican critique of sovereignty. He regarded the power to go to war (“military might”) as the highest power, higher than coercion and judicial power (Leibniz 1988[1677]: 115). Crucially he argued that even the supreme power can be divided (Leibniz 1988[1677]: 119). As we will see, the Holy Roman Empire and the European Union bear resemblances to this political ontology that transcends the spectrum states-system of states. Despite the variations between classical, renaissance and early modern republicanism (see Scott, Jonathan 2002: 64) they all treat the same problem: how can an arrangement be created between different units that satisfies their demands for liberty, autonomy and the common good and security? A key issue is, in the words of Montesquieu, “how to deploy power to balance power” (cited in van Gelderen and Skinner 2002: 3). The fact that a non-pacified political society stands at the centre of the theoretical calculations distinguishes republicanism from most theories of contemporary political science. The latter, dealing with domestic politics within (modern) states, take a pacified condition of politics resulting from a – relatively – stable monopoly of violence for granted. The inclusion of “force,” i.e. ultimately capacities

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for armed coercion or war, as a factor in the theoretical complex unites republicanism with modern IR theory. However, the former distinguishes itself from IR theory through the assumption that there exists a political community and a common good between a set of territorially bounded and armed units. In relation to the problems of this book and to international theory in general, it is advantageous that the major figures in republican theory were active before the doctrine of sovereignty became a dominant feature of political thinking and before the centralization of state power became so entrenched that it was seen as self- evident and, indeed, as the natural order of things. They were also writing before a view of the international system as only consisting of sovereign states became dominant. The division between state and state-system did not exist at the time when most republican writers were active (at least not up until Vattel). Instead they dealt with the problem of order and theorized solutions to it (Onuf 1989: 169). This chapter consists of three parts. First I argue that the combination of the republican principle of a mixed constitution and the principle of dualism and the nesting of members within a community with restraining but not commanding power creates a completely different kind of form of rule than the state or the states system. Second, I outline the basic features of an ideal type, which, paraphrasing James Madison, I call the “compound republic.” Third, I discuss how systems in the environment can disrupt compound republics but also create possibilities of balancing their internal tensions and thus enhancing their viability. The chapter concludes with the outline of hypothetical models of external action involving compound republics and external actors.

2.2 Republics evade the spectrum states-system of states A core republican ideal of government is that the constitution should be composed of several kinds or principles of government. Classical political theory distinguished three forms: monarchy, (rule of one), aristocracy (rule of the few) and democracy (rule of all). We find this list in most republican authors, from Aristotle (1984: 66 (2: 6) and 121–146 (4: 2–16)), Cicero (1998: 19–21) and Polybius (1979: 303) to Machiavelli (2003: 106–111) and Montesquieu (2009 [1748]: 21–29). Since each form had disadvantages in themselves, the best constitution is a mutually balancing combination of all three forms (Polybius 1979: 311–312, 315–318, 339–340, Cicero 1998: 32–33, 56–57, 65–66, Machiavelli

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2003: 109). The republican polity’s combination of different principles makes it a “mixed form,” a res publica or status mixta (van Gelderen and Skinner2002: 4). This caused difficulties for early modern thinkers who sought to classify republics since they could not be reduced to pure forms such as “aristocracies” or “monarchies.” A structural rendition of the republican ideal of a mixed constitution discerns that republican political theory creates a different composition of its members than a unitary state. The three forms of government are not only abstract principles but are distinctly connected to different groups within the polity. In terms of the “forms of rule” framework presented in the previous chapter the three forms of government can be understood as the number of power centres in the polity endowed with authority; either one, many or all social groups possess authority and right of codecision. Members of a republic can either be social groups, as in the Roman republic, or they can be territorial areas, such as the early United States and the Swiss Confederation. In Wolff’s civitas maxima the citizens are nations (Onuf 1998: 95). In the ideal type of the compound republic, units enjoy greater autonomy and constitute the form of rule rather than being constituted by it. Authority is not concentrated in a single decision-making centre but in common institutions in which the units are represented. Internal security is created not by pacification of the inside but by the retention of the means of force by the constituent units. This is the key point which makes republics distinct from unitary states and in combination with the existence of mutually binding institutions and a common polity that joins and binds all members makes it distinct from a statessystem. If the balancing function is taken seriously and we accept the centrality of war to politics outlined in the previous chapter, then different groups should be equal in terms of authority and at least some of them equal in terms of capabilities to exercise that authority. The ways in which different forms of rule manage and organize this feature is one of their most important distinguishing traits. We also saw, contrary to the foundational assumptions of state-based thinking in modern political science, that this capacity indeed was divisible between different parts of a single polity, for example in the dualistic Ständestaat and Leibniz political philosophy. In the ideal type of the compound republic the units retain the capabilities for organized violence and the authority to use them. This trait guarantees their liberty. These two characteristics, the encompassing and in some cases restraining unity and the legally armed multitude, mean that republics

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cannot be plotted along the spectrum states-system of states. This institutionalized relation to the capabilities of force makes republics qualitatively different from states as well as systems of states. The only way to analytically place them along this spectrum is to over- emphasize one aspect and reduce the republic to either a state (a manoeuvre which will probably lead the observer to conclude that the entity is an unsuccessful or failed state) or to a fledgling states-system. Another way would be to apply a teleological perspective, either prospectively and argue that the republic must be heading to either pole of the spectrum, or in retrospective analysis claim that any change to its form was predetermined. All choices make the characteristics, operating logics, political purposes and conditions of viability of the republic invisible. If one operates with the states-system of states spectrum as a chief analytical tool, one is bound to repeat these mistakes. The institutionalized relation to violence makes republics different to federal polities in which different institutions or groups nevertheless are subjected to a common centre in relation to authority over the means of violence. The high degree of independence of the constituent units as well as the fact that they may be territorially based is a trait that compound republics share with two other ideal types, the composite state and the empire. However, composite states and empires are not compound republics if the means of violence and the authority to use them is located in a single centre. Republics are however not systems of states since the members are bound by common restraining institutions (as we shall see in the empirical chapters) but also by a larger eminently political community that does not subject them to a hierarchy of command power. Republicanism and “unitary state thinking” (Deudney 1995: 192– 193, Meinecke 1998) differ with regard to two fundamental conceptual issues. First, the divisibility of authority and power. As in the late medieval Ständestaat, power in Wolff’s civitas maxima was not indivisible, absolute and final. The mixed form in combination with the ideal that different groups within the polity should possess authority and balance against each other sharply contrasts to the unitary state. In that form of rule authority, equated with sovereignty, is unitary and operates in a vertical direction from a single centre. Hobbes (1957: 121–122) equated (or conflated) authority with sovereignty and hence expressly denied the possibility of several centres. As a “radically anti-republican” (Onuf 1998: 52) thinker he denied that the monarchy, aristocracy and democracy could be mixed (Hobbes 1996: 123).

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Second, republican and theorists of the unitary state differ whether polities are interconnected in an open-systems fashion or a priori bounded in a closed-systems fashion. Republicanism starts out from a political ontology that resembles a systemic mileu of nested systems and argues that, for reasons of security, this mileu of interconnectedness should be strengthened by institutionalized bonds. The programme of the sovereign state originally recognized this mileu of nested corporations sharing authority and power but sought to transform it by redefining authority and power and by placing it in a single locus. For reasons of security, it both advocates and sees a mileu of atomistic, principally closed systems. As seen above, the hierarchization of politics within realms under these auspices entailed that arrangements between realms had to be seen in similar zero-sum terms and was thus out of the question. The two issues are intertwined, although not causally. A conception of power as unitary leads to the closed- systems conception, while a conception of power as divisible is a prerequisite for a nested systems conception. We shall see in subsequent chapters that the conception of divisible power and authority was a strong trait in the HRE, the early USA and in the EU. Similarly to dominant traditions of modern IR, insecurity/security and war are dominant features of republican thinking but the analysis and remedies are substantially different. Hobbesian thought, appropriated as tradition by Realism, takes as its starting-point the insecurity of the “condition of man [which] is a condition of war of every one against every one” in the state of nature (Hobbes 1996: 82–87). A republican thinker like Montesquieu criticized Hobbes by stressing the natural sociability of man over the presocial state preceding the social contract (Goyard-Fabre 1980: 12–15). Nevertheless republican political theory acknowledges the precariousness of political life and the reality of threats, possibly backed by violence (Viroli 1992: 286). In the Hobbesian tradition, insecurity is solved by handing over authority or power to the sovereign (Hobbes 1996: 114, Goyard-Fabre 1980: 25). In contrast, in the ideal type of the compound republic, these powers are retained by the members but these are nevertheless bound by common institutions. Modern liberal thought, similarly based on the spectrum from state to system of states, envisions relations of trade, mutual recognition of peaceful intentions and internal institutional and cultural commonality as democracies as efficiently spreading peace (Kant 1949: 123, Doyle 1996). Republican polities differ from these liberal views of domestic and international life since they are characterized by a latent distrust among the members as

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well as between the members and the centre and emphasize the need to create institutions to manage this situation. Operationalizing republican political theory for the purposes of this book requires recourse to ideal types. The republican tradition underlies the ideal type, the “compound republic”, and the Hobbesian one the unitary state. The latter ideal type encompasses different varieties of sovereign states, like absolutist and modern ones which allows for comparisons with other forms (Walker, 1993: 90–91). At the core of unitary state thinking is the idea of concentration of authority and capabilities of force to provide internal security. In addition, maximal autonomous agency is necessary for the state to provide safety in the competitive environment. The unitary state is no monolith but a configuration of administrative agencies, interest groups and other units that are sometimes but not always territorially organized. However, the members of the form of rule are organized in a hierarchical relationship to the centre and its units are basically seen as constituted by the centre and not conversely. Internal security is produced by a pacification of the inside through subordination of previously existing or potential centres of the means of force to a single monopoly of force which is the only one enjoying legitimacy. In contrast, in the ideal type of the compound republic, units enjoy greater autonomy and constitute the form of rule rather than being constituted by it. Authority is not concentrated in a single decision-making centre but in common institutions in which the units are represented. Internal security is created not by pacification of the inside but by the retention of the means of force by the constituent units.

2.3 The ideal type of the compound republic I will consider the compound republic as a general ideal type of rule ref ideal type and the HRE, the USA and the EU as instances thereof. This requires a conceptual reorganization since the sources of the Holy Roman Empire were not only classical republicanism but also Germanic law and traditional Imperial jurisprudence. Similarly, the EU was not founded according to explicit republican principles but nevertheless displays many important properties of this ideal type. Two core purposes – liberty and autonomous action The central concept in republican political theory is liberty. The political purpose of the compound republic as a form of rule is preservation of the liberty of its members and safeguarding their material survival.

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All features of the compound republic stem from balancing between these two purposes and maintaining the tension between them. This maintenance underlies the strategic purposes of this form of rule and it is central to its survival as a political form. Isaiah Berlin’s (2002: 169–181) distinction between positive and negative freedom provides us with the means to theorize this tension. Liberty in the republican tradition is primarily understood in a negative sense, i.e. as freedom from rule or intervention, either in the form of coercion or legal control. Intervention in the affairs of one member could be done by other members alone, in concert or by the central institutions of the republic. Hence liberty is secured through those institutions that restrain the autonomy and capacity of the members as well as of the centre. Correspondingly liberty is threatened by the breakdown of these institutions. The liberty of the members is protected by the common centre and institutions and cannot be upheld without them. Simultaneously as the members’ autonomy vis-à-vis each other is limited their liberty is secured through corresponding limitations on the autonomy of all other members of the republic. As Berlin (2002: 171) puts it, this means “Curtail[ing] freedom in the interests of ... indeed of freedom itself.” Liberty in the republican tradition stems from the conception that the members of the republic hold natural rights by grace of God, custom, contract or other inviolable principles. This idea has survived in the idea of popular sovereignty where the sovereignty of nations stems from the idea of the population’s inalienable right to self-rule. Like all forms of rule, republics are characterized by a tension between rights and duties (Skinner 1984: 208–218 esp. 218). Regardless, the emphasis on negative liberty is a trait that unites the HRE and the EU when compared with other kinds of polities as well as with other republics. As the following chapters show, the HRE, the USA and the EU differed with regard to the balance between duties and rights of the members. No political form can do without agency, the power of acting (Deudney 1995: 197, footnote 30.). This power corresponds to Berlin’s concept “positive freedom” – defined as freedom to, rather than freedom from. I will use the term “autonomous agency” to describe the freedom to act either in terms of legal or normative autonomy or capabilities (e.g. economic, military or natural resources). Hence it is the scope of or right to action which is a concept distinct from the classical formulation of liberty (Skinner 1998: 114 note 22). Primarily “autonomous agency” refers to the agency of the individual members of the republic. Secondarily it refers to the autonomy, capabilities and agency of the centre, which can take various organizational forms, e.g. courts, assemblies

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or bureaucratic agencies. In a compound republic autonomous action is also safeguarded by common institutions or agreements defining its scope and by the fact that the capacity for organized violence remains with the members. The institutions of restraint can also threaten the autonomous agency of the members if these should grow too strong or be exercised too strictly. In sum, the members of the republic have autonomous agency, which is restrained vis-à-vis one another and so has the centre, which is restrained vis-à-vis the members. Threats to a compound republic The balance between the liberty of the members and their autonomous action and upholding an equilibrium where restraint serves liberty and security is central to the compound republic. This need creates a completely different configuration of the members of the compound republic than in the unitary state. The members of a compound republic are connected by horizontal, non-hierarchical ties and retain authority over the means of violence. The centre has different functions, depending on the variant of the ideal type sketched here. In general the social power invested in the centre is not as great as it is in the unitary state. Above all, it does not extend to exclusive authority over the means of violence. Attempts to dissolve, rather than manage, this tension would result in a different kind of polity regardless of which principle is favoured. In a republic characterized by these two core concepts, with multiple centres of power as members and an environment towards which some level of political response is necessary, six types of threats may arise. They are divided into two categories, republican and systemic. Above we saw how republican thinkers distinguished between three basic forms of government. A combination of these is ideal or even necessary since the polity is seen as constantly threatened by the corrupt forms of the three kinds of government that would ensue if each were not checked by the other two forms. A number of writers stress that balancing between different forms of government is not just about finding an optimum. It is about avoiding the threats to liberty and security of a republic that inevitably ensue if the republic is ruled according to one principle rather than according to a balanced mix. If this happens the polity will descend into a degenerative cycle of corrupt forms in which liberty and security are progressively lost (Polybius 1979: 304–311, Cicero 1998: 20–21, 30–32, 42–48. 71–74, Machiavelli 2003: 107–109, Montesquieu 2009 [1748]: 112–120). First, internal tyranny, the corrupt form of monarchy, is a concentration of power that threatens the liberty and autonomy of the members. In extreme cases this entails

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their extinction (Deudney 1995). Second, the establishment of an oligarchy by several of the strongest members of the republic is the corrupt form of aristocracy. Such a development would mean that the liberty of the weaker members would be lost and that security as a whole would decrease due to military competition between the stronger ones. In classical republican thought, such a course of events is predicted to lead to the loss of individual liberties within the powers that pursue an “imperialist” course of action. In general expansionist policies were regarded as hazardous to liberty (Armitage 2002). Third, internal anarchy, the corrupt form of democracy, may lead either to disintegration or the aforementioned scenarios, tyranny and oligarchy (cf. Deudney 1995). In many republics one finds a history of violent conflict, either more distant or contemporary, either mythical or real, that constitutes a discursive backdrop with which measures to prevent “anarchy” can be motivated. While the republican threats are unique to compound republics, their viability and survival is also subject to three general threats. First, all polities are confronted with external pressures, e.g. security threats, diplomatic relations, and trade/economic relations. However, because dealing with them presupposes joint or coherent action the compound republic is differently disposed to handle external pressures. The republican threats make it difficult for compound republics to constitute themselves as actors. Second, like any other form of rule the compound republic confronts the threat of loss of legitimacy if it is unable to exercise its political purpose. A third threat is that members use nonlegitimate exit options. By exit options I mean that members act only in their own name, not in the name of the republic. These are temporary as opposed to permanent secession. Not only non-legitimate exits (in a normative sense) are thinkable but also illegal ones. This would mean that a member breaks the laws regulating its autonomy, for instance in respect of the liberty of other members. Loss of legitimacy and nonlegitimate exits threaten the survival of the republic since they entail its erosion as a political system (see above). Institutionalizing republicanism: strategic purposes and implementation mechanisms A compound republic will have institutions to counter these threats. These will be of two kinds, an abstract one that I call strategic purposes and an operative one that I call implementation functions. Among the strategic purposes of the republic some aim to secure the survival of the members and others aim to secure the continued survival of the

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republic. Analytically there is a relation of dependence between these two aspects since the survival of the republic in many but not in all cases is a precondition of the survival of the units and vice versa. However, from the perspective of actors with a short-term perspective they may appear to be opposed. In order to meet the two first threats, inner tyranny and oligarchy, the republic needs to safeguard the autonomy of its members through mechanisms of dispersing authority and capacity to use organized violence among the members (Deudney 1995: 204). Thus there is no central monopoly of legitimate organized violence within the republic although it may have been established within the sphere controlled by individual members. Another mechanism for implementing this purpose is a framework of institutions (regulative, normative and cognitive) that restrain the autonomy of the members vis-à-vis each other. These institutions assume the form of constitutional rules, representative assemblies and cultural norms and beliefs. The threat of oligarchy as well as external pressures is met with what could be called a balanced embeddedness of the members in different respects. In some variants of the ideal type certain functions, such as economic relations, warfare or diplomacy, may only be exercised through collective systems of action. In others, collective action may just be one possibility among several. The threat of inner tyranny is met with institutions that restrain the autonomy or scope of action of the centre, i.e. constitution, agencies of governance or common assemblies. Hence there is a tension between these institutions and those that embed the members with one another and with the centre. Often the restraining institutions are Janus-faced in the sense that they protect the liberty of the members against incursions from any direction or agent. It is however important to note that this double nature is not always internally consistent but harbours a contradiction. The purpose of securing the liberty of the members vis-àvis one another does not rest only on negative limitations on the autonomy of all members and of the centre as well as on a certain degree of integration between the members. Instead, embeddedness can in this context be considered a more secure instrument of restraint. However, units do not lose their distinctiveness in processes of embedding which the term “integration” implies. These means are in latent conflict with the purpose of safeguarding the liberty and autonomy of the members vis-à-vis the centre. This tension is inherent in the compound republic and cannot be avoided but only managed. It is the central balancing act that a great deal of politics in the republic revolves around, which

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has a significant impact on external politics and, in the last resort, on its survival. The third threat, internal anarchy, (which is met with the purpose of securing internal peace), is handled by balanced embedding as well as by an emphasis on conflict resolution/moderation and keeping the community intact. To this end the collective memory of the historical conflict or conflicts play an important role. In relation to the fourth threat, external pressures, there are institutions for joint action which in some cases extend to common defence. The latter often takes the form of constitutionally regulated possibilities of coordination or use of resources, either those that are held jointly, i.e. centralized collective resources, or those that belong to the members, i.e. under their authority and at their disposal. The clearest examples of resources in this sense are resources of organized violence i.e. military personnel and specialists (cavalry, artillery, strategic airlift, planning headquarters etc.). Additionally the constitution often includes extensive possibilities that different pressures are met on the level of individual members and thereby never become issues for the republic as a whole. In connection with meeting external pressures contradictions arise in relation to the other strategic purposes of the republic and attempts to counter threats may give rise to new ones. The purpose of safeguarding the liberty of the members against the centre can be considered as directly threatened by a centralization of resources of power since fears may arise that a temporary centralization may become permanent and that previously limited centralization may become extended. Similar fears may arise in connection with the use of previously existing institutions of common authority and capabilities. Safeguarding the liberty of the members against the threat of oligarchy means that a joint delegation of tasks, means and capabilities to the more powerful members can also be interpreted as threatening. This misgiving concerns unwillingness to supply the larger members with money and resources as well as with the political mandate to act and speak in the name of the republic. Safeguarding the internal peace through resolution or moderation of conflicts can lead to a tension with responding to external pressure in situations where the members disagree on the ends as well as the means. The aim of minimizing internal conflict can lead to all parties abstaining from action, since the possibility of enforcing decisions or actions does not exist. Finally, dispersing the authority and capacity for organized violence, intended to prevent internal tyranny and oligarchy, naturally presents operational difficulties in responding to external pressures.

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Failure of the republic to act as a whole may lead, apart from inaction or separate legitimate actions, to members using non-legitimate exit options and acting on their own, or in extreme cases, attempting to act in the name of the republic. Non-legitimate exits occur when a member is acting on its own within the boundaries of its legally defined autonomy, but in a way that is in conflict with what other members define as core values of the republic. In systems theory terms, this means that the exiting member constructs its identity through other institutions and acts accordingly. If exiting temporarily from the system in a legitimate way is not provided for by the rights that members of the form of rule have, then the form of rule will be seen as having failed in upholding its own purpose. Depending on how grave the transgression is considered to be, whether the transgressor(s) are important members and how prolonged the exiting is, illegitimate exits may directly threaten the political survival of the compound republic as a form of rule. Although the legitimacy of all forms of state may be threatened in times of crisis, the compound republic is particularly vulnerable. This is due to the lack of enforcement mechanisms since those would be in conflict with more fundamental purposes of the republic. Therefore failure to enforce, in effect to coerce members, can be presented as failure on the part of the republic. If this view is held by a significant number of political actors, a non- enforcement scenario might result in a significant loss of legitimacy on the part of the republic. This is where the contrast between unitary state and compound republic becomes most glaring. Anyone using the specific arrangements of the former as a normative measure will likely regard the latter unfavourably. The deadlocks arising in connection with response to external pressures form what I call the strategic paradox of the compound republic; external action presupposes a certain measure of centralization which the compound republic is “designed” to prevent. The ideal type presented in this chapter is not deterministic and does not argue that irresolvable deadlocks always will arise. However, reaching decisions may be time- consuming and difficult. The threat of non-legitimate exits is countered by providing the members with legitimate exit options within the framework of their constitutional autonomy. Within certain boundaries the members are free to act proactively or reactively in their own name and as they see fit. This safety valve harbours substantial risks. Even if the constitution and members of the republic recognize an action of a particular member as separate from the republic itself. it is not certain that other actors will do so. Hence individual members may implicate the republic as a

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whole through their actions. Also, if a member fails in a solitary venture then it may turn to the republic for help. In that case, its members must decide between being drawn into an issue that it originally rejected or reject one of its own members. The tension between liberty and autonomous action is present between the strategic purposes and on a more concrete level between different implementation functions, the institutions that compose and support the compound republic. On an overarching level this tension expresses itself as a conflict between safeguarding the autonomy of the members and restraining it. Between the implementation mechanisms two tensions are discernible. First, dispersing the capacity for organized violence, which is designed to preserve the autonomy and the liberty of the members of the republic, stands in latent conflict with the aim of securing internal peace. In other words, there is a tension between providing the capacity for organized violence and preventing its use. Second, the objective of preserving the autonomy of the members stands in latent contrast to that of securing external peace. In many cases the latter purpose necessitates a concentration of authority and the means of force, something that runs counter to the former one. Criteria for the existence and demise of a compound republic A distinction between a compound republic and other forms of rule characterized by republicanism as an ideology or philosophy is necessary to provide the basis for a rigorous empirical analysis. This distinction allows classification, but more importantly it allows us to understand when a compound republic “fails” and turns into another form of rule. A compound republic functions as a system of mutual self-restraint among a number of autonomous members. A form of rule may have republican traits or its institutions and ideology may be characterized by republican ideas, but if there are no institutions of mutual restraint or if these have become defunct, then it is not a compound republic. Instead the polity in question could be a unitary state characterized by a division of powers or a city state with a strong republican ethos, discourse or political tradition, like early modern Switzerland, the Dutch republic, Florence or Venice or the modern United States. The same applies if the units lose their autonomy vis-à-vis each other, i.e. their liberty. Given the multitude of units, exceptions to the rule of self-restraint may occur, which will be examined in the empirical chapters. Central criteria for the existence of a compound republic are: (1) that the majority of the members refrain from action or conduct their

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individual or collective actions with such safeguards as to ensure the balance within the polity; (2) institutional safeguards of the liberty of the members aimed at averting threats structurally similar to “tyranny,” “oligarchy” and “anarchy”; and (3) a transgressing member is censored for its actions by the republic. Every variant of the ideal type of the compound republic has a certain “breaking point,” a level of tolerance for the extent of transgression against its norms beyond which it is difficult to say that the system of self-restraint is working. A fourth criterion is that the polity to some extent is characterized by what Poggi describes as “dualism,” the joint ruling of the polity by distinct units, territorially or otherwise organized. One way to falsify my theory regarding a particular formation would be to examine these structural features. Another would be to show that events that can be described as realizations of the republican threats (tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy) take place without any protests. Naturally, these threats would have had to be recognized as such by members of the polity on previous occasions. In a longer temporal perspective it may be possible to distinguish breakdowns of the compound republic system which are followed by periods during which the system is working. However, if these breakdowns are serious or numerous enough it is safe to say that the balance will be disrupted. A final word on this matter is that all events that can be retrospectively understood as breakdowns are not necessarily recognized as such at the time they occur. Given that several logics can be contained within one system, some occurrences may be seen as successes and only in retrospect can they be shown to have undermined the balance of the polity. A latent tension between the two core concepts of liberty and autonomous agency pervades the compound republic, its philosophy, its institutions and its internal and foreign politics. This tension highlights how certain parts of the republic are dependent upon each other for maintaining the balance that the compound republic as a whole depends upon for its survival. As Polybius (1979: 315–318) put it, each of the three principles of government “can if it chooses, work with or against the other.” Focus on this tension highlights how one purpose is able to undermine and ultimately destroy the other. Hence the tension is expressed in, on the one hand, a mutual dependency that presupposes that the institutions of the two core concepts are balanced against each other and, on the other hand, a possibility of or even propensity to mutual destruction. With the basic tension as an analytical tool one can investigate the institutional structure in a variant of the ideal type in order to ascertain

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whether institutions are missing or weakened in relation to the purposes they are intended to fulfil. An equally important component is whether the institutions are strong enough to match and balance other institutions with contrary purposes in order to create the balance needed for survival. If the balance in the system as a whole is not maintained then the polity is threatened. Unfettered liberty threatens to dissolve the polity. Conversely, if the agency of the centre is given unrestrained dominance over the parts the polity would be transformed into a unitary state – possibly even a despotic one (see Cicero 1998: 71–74). This describes the two kinds of political “demise” of a compound republic. The two alternatives match the opposition between “anarchy” (statessystem) and “tyranny” (a unitary state). Republican community is only possible midway between these two threats to its political survival. It should be recalled that these are not only normative threats in the sense of destruction of political values. They are also physical threats since, according to republican theory, the formation of a state will cause violence and a states-system is more prone to produce large-scale violence than a system of mutual restraint. As A.H.L. Heeren (1819: 11) and Adam Watson, (1992: 209–213 and 1997) have pointed out, an international system can be stabilized by a nested/nesting system in its midst.

2.4 Compound republics in world politics All units in world politics have contacts with entities in the environment but republican systems do not seal off their boundary vis-à-vis systems in the environment in the same way as sovereign states. Sealing off and controlling the boundary against the outside is central to the political programme of the unitary state but republics cannot do this since it would curtail the liberty of the members in an unacceptable way. Throughout this chapter we have seen that upholding the balance between liberty and autonomous agency is crucial for the viability of a compound republic. In the previous chapter I argued that the viability of some forms of rule can depend on their connections to systems in their environment. It is possible that the balancing function may be exercised by or through factors external to the republic. Indeed, because of the centrality and potency of the basic tension between liberty and autonomous agency in the compound republic it may not even be possible to produce a balance by endogenous factors alone. External balancers may either be institutions outside the constitutional boundaries of the republic or one or several actors outside the territorial borders of the republic. The external balancing relation

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between a compound republic and an external institution or actor may become established due to intentional design or due to unintended consequences and historical contingency. External balancing can occur because internal institutions are lacking or too weak. It may be the result of wars (as rights or obligations of conquest or defeat), treaties of protection or settlements among a larger number of powers designed to promote stability over a larger area which includes the compound republic. Another possibility is that the external power may be invited because of difficulties in handling the internally generated security threats. The balancing function may not be explicit or recognized until it is changed or made defunct. Furthermore, the relations of power enabling the balancing function may be explicit but not necessarily the function as such. The reason is that political structures are rarely the results of a coherent rational design and often contain institutional factors which have survived from previous eras. Empirical investigation is clearly required to enable a more detailed understanding of how the relation of external balance occurs. The composition and political purpose of a compound republic inevitably causes problems in relation to systems and actors in its environment. Its attempts to restrain and to some extent transcend the dynamics of power politics internally do not extend beyond its borders where other styles and conditions of politics pertain. Given their difficulties with concerted action, systems characterized by a high degree of rivalry and conflict present a particular risk to their material survival as well as political viability. Therefore it is unsurprising that there are strong incentives for compound republics to expand their systems of governance in order to replace the statessystem. If this is not possibly they may try to change the international system in a direction characterized less by rivalry and more by the rule of law which in a more limited way mirrors the republic. The empirical chapters show that a capacity to expand or shape its environment is a major asset to the viability of a republic. Great powers, particularly system- dominant ones, present particular challenges to the survival of compound republics, as well as opportunities to enhance viability. The presence of great powers in the environment may exacerbate and ameliorate the collective actions of the republic. Naturally, the destructive military capabilities of the great powers matter, but equally important is their political capacity to divide as well as to strengthen the republic (or course not entirely divorced from military might). Which of these capacities dominates depends on whether the general strategy of the powerful external actor tends towards establishing “hegemony” or “empire.” The former retains

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discrete units in possession of full autonomy and rights, whereas the latter entails the integration of multiple units in a hierarchically ordered system. Hegemony “functions essentially to manage, to maintain some degree of order and decision-making capacity within a system of dispersed authority” (Schroeder 2004a: 299). David Lake (2009) stresses that hegemons can be beneficial to stability in an interstate system. We can distinguish between benign and predatory hegemonies (Schroeder 2004b: 53–57). The former is a dominant actor that identifies its interests with a joint stability within a territorial system whose affairs it manages and influences. The latter uses its preponderance to achieve individual gains and sees interests and yields in a zero-sum rather than in a cumulative fashion. The predatory hegemony approximates imperial strategies of domination and control but without integration of other units.

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3 A Long-lived Republic: The Holy Roman Empire 1648–1763

3.1 A neglected Methuselah The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation is one of the most longlived political organizations in European history, yet it has been little researched within International Relations and other social sciences. Founded in 962 and formally dissolved in 1806, it underwent a series of mutations during its long history. This chapter deals mainly with the period between 1648 and 1763 when the Empire corresponded most closely to the ideal type of the compound republic, making it a suitable analogy for the United States of America and the European Union. In IR theory the HRE is mostly known through the idea that it disappeared through the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Over the past decade revisionist research has demonstrated this assertion and the idea that the Peace of Westphalia created the modern system of states to be myths (Krasner 1993, Duchhardt 1999, Osiander 2001a, Philpott 2001, Teschke 2003). The idea in IR and international law that the Empire was dissolved in 1648 is an inheritance brought over by Leo Gross from the German-Prussian historiography which extolled the virtues of the strong Prussian state and regarded alternative forms of rule as humiliating (Iggers 1983). The existence of strong constituent units has led observers to consider the Empire as a polity somewhere between a federation and a confederation or – seeing that it was neither – ignoring it (Vann 1986: 9). However, the existence of an Emperor, traditionally coming from the House of Habsburg, who was both a powerful actor and one of the central imperial institutions, led some observers to regard the Empire as a state or empire in the classical sense. This perspective, combined with the fact that the Emperor was neither formally sovereign nor commanded obedience 51

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from the estates, has led to judgements of the Empire as a “failed state” or an ineffectual copy of European neighbours such as France, Russia or Britain (Wilson, Peter 1999: 4–5, Feine 1932: 65–66, Aretin 1986: 19). Thus the nation-state as a combination of normative-political prescription and lens of analytical description made the Empire first a pariah, then invisible. However, the HRE cannot be adequately understood along the spectrum between state and system of states (Böckenförde 1969: 450). Even the reappraisals of the HRE in recent historical scholarship have not formulated a theoretically rigorous understanding of its fundamental difference from the spectrum state-system of states. For example, Aretin sees it as characterized by a tension between “hierarchical” and “federal” tendencies (Aretin 1997a: 158–172, 209, 223, 234, 359, 362). However, the concept “federal” is not compatible with the conception of estates, a combination often used by Aretin. The concept “federal” is too wide to be applicable to the entire period 1648 to 1763 (or to 1806). The tendencies that Aretin subsumes under this term differ too much for the concept to be meaningful. The Empire played a considerable role in European history because of its longevity and its geographical extent. Between 1648 and 1770 the Empire covered modern Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, the western parts of modern Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and – although disputed – parts of eastern France. During the eighteenth century Alto Agide, Lombardy, Piedmont and Tuscany in northern Italy came under imperial rule. Large parts of the patrimony of the Habsburg dynasty, holders of the office of the Emperor between 1458 and 1806, lay outside the formal boundaries of the Empire. Nevertheless areas corresponding to modern Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Transylvania and Vojvodina in northern Serbia were intimately connected to the Empire (Schmidt, Georg 2004). The Empire consisted of a large number of principalities of various sizes, united under a formally elected Emperor. The princes were the members of the Empire as a form of rule. The character of the relationship between the princes and the Emperor, i.e. between the members and the centre, had changed significantly since the reform movement in the fifteenth century (Schmidt, Georg 1999: 9–55). The princes, whose territories I will refer to as principalities, had made substantial gains in negative as well as positive freedom whereas the powers of the centre, among which I include the Emperor, had been diminished. Unlike the EU, whose members are considered equal, the members of the Empire were ranked according to aristocratic status and divided into the categories that the Councils of the Diet provided. Hence equality

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was qualified since within the respective councils all members were equal but the councils were hierarchically ordered. The princes of the Empire were actors of different rank and status ranging from kings and electoral princes (Kurfürsten), through counts, margraves and barons to knights. Ecclesiastical estates were lands whose princes were bishops of the German Catholic church. Hence the individual actors of the Empire were unequal both in material power as manifested in territory, military power and economy and in formal status. However, the Empire cannot be reduced to a hierarchical system, firstly since all actors were estates by the grace of and subject to the imperial constitution, and secondly since relations between actors of the same rank were relatively egalitarian. All princes held jurisdictional rights in their territories and they had authority over and control of the means of organized violence – some of them even possessed substantial armies. They also possessed the right to conduct foreign alliances and go to war. Despite these facts, which we today associate with sovereignty, they were not sovereign states. The main dividing line between the members ran between Electors, who had the authority to elect the Emperor, and ordinary princes. In order to avoid an anachronistic understanding of the Empire, care must be taken not to conflate the ruler (e.g., the House of Hohenzollern) with the land (e.g., Brandenburg) since it leads to the mistake of seeing estates as states. Hence their specific character and that of the ties between them must be taken into account. The major territories of the Empire were the Habsburg lands (‘Austria’), Bavaria (Wittelsbach dynasty), Brandenburg-Prussia (Hohenzollern dynasty), the Electorate of Cologne, Hanover (Welfen dynasty), Hesse-Kassel, Mecklenburg, the Electorate of Mainz, the Palatinate, Saxony (Wettin dynasty) and Würtemberg. Unlike other early modern realms the Empire had retained the estates as the foundation of the polity. The ideal-typical scheme was a tripartite composition of the clergy, the nobility and the cities (burghers). Estates were not defined on the basis of economic but of social status based on rights and privileges (Bush 1983: 16). While many other polities had subdued the estates under a single centre, dualism remained intact as a structural principle in the Empire (Poggi 1978). The principalities of the Empire were actors with constitutional rights by virtue of their status as part of the noble estates of the Empire rather than by virtue of controlled territory or recognized bureaucratic apparatus holding territory (Eulau 1941: 647). Not only were owners of the territorial principalities part of the noble estate of the Empire, the internal structure of their lands was based on co-government between prince and estates. Thus a

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prince was both a nobleman in the hierarchy of the Empire and a territorial ruler of other noblemen inside each principality. In this sense, a prince was a co-ruler in the Empire and had to admit co-rule with subordinate estates in his territories. This chapter illustrates the necessity of including external factors, actors as well as systems, in an analysis of the viability of the form of rule of the compound republic type. First, the support of a benign hegemon is beneficial to the maintenance of compound republic structures. A predatory hegemon may create cohesion in a republic as well as divide it. The latter happened to the HRE, causing it in the long run to lose the traits of a compound republic. Second, the possibility of creating “exceptions” and bypassing the republican constitution through external systems presented the Empire with a dilemma, since an openness to other systems was an expression of the liberty of its members. At the same time it allowed the Habsburgs and other powerful actors to perform a series of unconstitutional coups that eroded the system. The structural inequality of the members affected their access to the principal external system – the European system of states – and disabled the restraining institutions of the Empire. Third, repeated bypassing of the imperial constitution eroded the power of its institutions and eventually made the political purpose of this form of rule impossible to uphold as the actors with an interest in doing so had been rendered powerless. Fourth being able to control systems in the environment or to be shielded from them is crucial to the survival of a compound republic. The Empire lacked strategies and tools to influence and/or change its environment and had no means of resisting its influence.

3.2 The Holy Roman Empire as a compound republic The difficulties of understanding the HRE on the basis of mutually excluding concepts and categories are not new. When the concept of sovereignty entered the political vocabulary of the early modern era, it became increasingly difficult to comprehend the Empire. The mutual exclusivity of the concepts “state” and “collection of states” (Onuf 1998: 123, 166 and 233–234) underlies this predicament. If a number of political units each have sovereignty, then they are understood as a collection of states, whereas if they do not, but rather are subservient to a centre that possesses sovereignty or something identifiable with it, they are parts of a state. The answer from scholars based in the Empire, such as Pufendorf and Althusius, was that sovereignty, as formulated by Bodin and Hobbes, was not applicable to the Empire

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(Klippel 1990: 124, van Gelderen and Skinner 2002: 207, Stolleis 1988: 174–186). Instead it was a status mixta, a combination of monarchy, aristocracy and monarchy. Early modern political and legal theorists argued whether the Empire was a “monarchy” or an “aristocracy,” terms that in our political vocabulary have only residual meaning. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the terms designated “rule by one” and “rule by the many” respectively, which related to whether the polity was ruled by one or several centres of power. The opposition between these terms, analogous to the opposition between “supranationalism” and “intergovernmentalism,” reflects uncertainty about how to deal with the issues of multitude and political rule. Sovereignty, with its claim that authority, and by extension the subject that wields it, is indivisible, inserts a wedge between the one and the many which separates them according to the possession of this right to exercise authority. In contrast, republican theories of mixed government allow and advocate a sharing of authority between several centres of power, united in one. Eschewing the concept of sovereignty, Leibniz (1988[1677]: 117–118) saw the empire as a collection of units, joined in another unit without losing their authority. Early modern thinkers debated not only whether the Empire was a monarchy or an aristocracy but also if it had to be considered as one of the two forms of government or whether it could be both kinds, joined in one polity. Notable pre-1648 advocates of this view, resisting Bodin’s claim that the Empire was (one) an aristocracy were Johannes Limnaeus and Benedict Carpzov (Aretin and Hammerstein 1997: 469). The rapid advances made by the concept of sovereignty through the writings of Bodin, Hobbes and Vattel made it increasingly difficult to think of multitude in a way that did not draw a distinct line between one and several centres of power. Hence the divisions between those who advocated the former and those who advocated the latter interpretation became increasingly entrenched. With time the idea that they need not be separated over the issue of authority receded into oblivion. Landeshoheit, like sovereignty a right to authority, plays a key role in understanding the unity of the Empire despite its being composed of a multitude of autonomous members. Landeshoheit granted authority to the many centres of power (the princes), but was originally bestowed by the one, (the Emperor), and was guaranteed by the polity as a whole, (membership in the Empire). Analysing it and its function points a way out of our late modern predicament of being faced with political multitude but having difficulties understanding it due to our conceptual heritage.

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Contemporaries described the Empire as a status mixta – a mixed state. This term and the idea that a polity could, and ideally should, be composed of several different forms of government, are inheritances from Classical Republicanism (Fink 1962). Mixed state is, firstly ,a descriptive term designating a polity made up of several distinct centres of authority, and secondly, a normative one arguing that the multiplicity of centres of authority and their differences is conducive to a balance from which the stability polity as well as liberty benefit. The uniqueness of the Empire lay in its composition of many forms of government with the objective of safeguarding the liberty as well as the security of its members. “In its complex nature – rule of an Emperor, feudal organization, a state of the estates and – federalism – the Empire had a somewhat coincidental and wavering but for this very reason a more efficient balance of power ... the Empire essentially an internally oriented organisation of peace, not a power-state (Machtstaat). The expansion of power was not the purpose of the state. The purpose of the Empire was ordered, peaceful and rule-guided coexistence. In a state of the Estates this also meant the protection of the special position of the Estates” (Schlaich 1977: 175, emphasis added). Threats and purposes The central purpose of the Empire was to safeguard the liberty and security of its members, the estates, as individual units and as a whole (Aretin 1997a: 45, Hegel 1966 [1802]: 27). The threats abstractly described in the previous chapter found the following specific manifestations: Republican threats 1) The threat of internal tyranny found its expression in the perceived threat of domination by the Habsburg Emperor that would transform the Empire into an absolutist state. This scenario was greatly feared since it would deprive the estates of their traditional liberties, which will be discussed below. 2) The oligarchy that was feared was a possible alliance between the greatest princes, primarily the Electors, which would divide the Empire into separate spheres of interest. In the eighteenth century the main threat in this respect was that the Habsburgs (Austria) and the Hohenzollern (Prussia) would divide the Empire between themselves (Aretin 1997c) .

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3) Internal anarchy was feared in the form of a return to the religious wars of the sixteenth century and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) that had ravaged the Empire. Systemic threats The most dangerous external pressures were Ottoman invasions during the 1660s and 1680s and the recurring French aggression. Second, loss of legitimacy came in several forms relative to the perspective of the specific member. First, failure to protect the members from foreign aggression or, from the viewpoint of the smaller principalities, from the aggression of the larger members. Second, failure to protect the liberty of the estate. Protestant estates saw the Catholic estates and the Habsburgs as potentially threatening the religious freedom. The larger estates saw the restraints placed by the Empire on their agency as potentially violating their liberties. Finally, non-legitimate exit options were the most dangerous ruinous threats to the Empire. Because the larger estates of the Empire were also princes of European stature they had two identities: as imperial and as European actors. Within these two identities they had different interests, in turn results of two different systems of action containing differing logics. This corresponded to the possibility of switching between two systems of action outlined in Chapter 1 above. All major and middle actors feared policies and processes that might infringe upon their Landeshoheit and lead to internal tyranny, i.e. concentration of power to a single centre. Some estates mainly opposed the Habsburgs, others opposed centralization to the central institutions of the Empire. Bavaria was primarily opposed to the former whereas Prussia, especially during the second half of the eighteenth century, opposed both. Despite the internal tensions no estate, not even Brandenburg-Prussia, ever contemplated leaving the Empire after 1648 (Osiander 2001a and Vann 1986: 13). With the possible exception of Saxony and the ecclesiastical Electors, the threat of oligarchy was not a major concern for the Electors but it was certainly seen as a threat for many of the princes. Anarchy was feared by all with the possible exceptions of Bavaria during the eighteenth century and Prussia after 1749 who saw it as the price they might have to pay for gains in territory and status. Few if any of the territorial princes opposed increased internal control or territorial expansion outside the Empire’s borders but all were hostile to infringements of the liberties within the Empire. Although all princes,

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great and small, Catholic and Protestant, ecclesiastical and secular, treasured Landeshoheit, the dividing lines ran between those who considered the Emperor as a protector of their liberty and those who saw him as a threat to it. Yet another difference ran between those who saw the best protection in the institutions of the Empire and between those who saw it in their own capabilities, fortified through alliances with foreign actors and with other estates. This catalogue of threats formed the basis of a logic of appropriateness, according to which members of the Empire defined their interests to ward off these threats, and modelled their actions accordingly. The tension between liberty of the members and the powers of the centre is expressed in the tension between the Landeshoheit and the hierarchical ties between the Emperor and the estates. The two aims of the Empire, safeguarding the liberty of the estates and offering protection for the material security from internal and external threats, were sometimes contradictory, since the centralization necessary for action triggered threats to the internal balance. This predicament corresponds to the strategic paradox of the compound republic dealt with in Chapter 2; Chapter 5 shows that the EU suffers from it as well. An important difference between the Empire and the EU is that the former could not eschew external action since the international system was characterized by a higher frequency and intensity of warfare. Also it lacked an external system as well as an external actor that could adequately protect it. The external actors commissioned to protect it, France and Sweden, eventually turned out to be predators as much as protectors. Hence the strategic paradox was unavoidable in a way that it is not for the EU. The greatest threat to the EU is, as we shall see below, loss of legitimacy and systemic erosion rather than material destruction through war. The composition of imperial institutions The office of the Emperor After 1648 the office of the Emperor no longer had the direct political authority that it possessed during the Middle Ages. Despite the lack of direct power associated with classical empires or with sovereign unitary states, the office retained substantial importance firstly as a constitutional pillar of the Empire; secondly as a source of loyalty and unity of the Empire; thirdly as a protector of the smaller, often Catholic, estates of the Empire; and fourthly due to the material capabilities of the Habsburg dynasty who held the office between 1438 and 1806 with only one exception, the Wittelsbach Charles VII in the 1740s (Aretin 1997b: 413–469).

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The Emperor was elected by the Electoral Princes, the Kurfürsten. Originally they were the Archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the King of Bohemia (a title held by the Habsburgs), the Duke of Saxony, the Count Palatine of the Rhine and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The Duke of Bavaria was made an Elector in 1648 and so was the House of Hanover in 1692. Since the Middle Ages the office had gradually been stripped of direct political power due to restrictions passed by the imperial Diet and by the Imperial Capitulations, the promises delivered by the candidate to the imperial throne as conditions for his election. The capitulations were a kind of self-restraint on the part of the Emperor (Malettke 1994: 147). The treaties of Westphalia expressed the ambition to restrain the Emperor’s authority by creating a permanent capitulation (IPO VIII: 3). The issue, however, was never settled. The office of the Emperor was one of the central institutions and as such it presented the threat of internal tyranny, should its power grow unchecked by the institutions that restrained it. Nevertheless it also guarded the constitution by balancing against the threat of oligarchy of the larger estates and against anarchy. It did so not only by virtue of its own constitutional powers or by the material resources of the Habsburgs but because it presented the possibility of mobilizing estates who felt threatened by oligarchy and anarchy. The Emperor held a special appeal for the smaller, the ecclesiastical and the Catholic estates. This asset was also a liability, since it created an image of the Emperor as a representative and supporter of partial interests. The Habsburgs was the most powerful dynasty in the Empire, whose patrimonial lands were by far the largest in the Empire and indeed in Europe. The intimate link, and over time, identification, between the centre of the Empire and one of its members undermined the system’s credibility and its ability to balance internal tensions. Throughout the history of the Empire the office of the Emperor vacillated between attempting to act as a central institution of the whole and being a tool of one of the mightiest members – the Habsburg dynasty. The office of the Emperor itself constituted a threat to the Empire as a republican form of rule not only due to its centralizing tendencies, but also due to the aspirations of the Habsburgs. During the later seventeenth century the latter displayed an increased willingness to accommodate the larger territorial princes, particularly Prussia, in a power-sharing scheme which was seen by many smaller estates as approaching a bipolar oligarchy (Aretin 1997c). One of the greatest legal scholars of the Empire, Johann Jakob Moser, argued that the Emperor acted as the protector and keeper of the

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internal balance within the Empire (Aretin 1997a: 43). The office certainly played that role but only together with other institutions. Like any other institution, it was in itself a threat to the Empire as a republic. Its protective role could only come into force when it was balanced by other countervailing institutions. Hence the Empire in its totality and not the Emperor alone was the keeper of liberty and balance. The point of the security arrangement of the compound republic is not to eradicate a specific internal threat, since a domination of any one tendency is equally threatening. Instead, threats must be kept in check by the maintenance of a balance between several countervailing tendencies and institutions. Imperial law and the imperial courts The estates were also restrained by the imperial laws and the two courts of the Empire, the Aulic Council (Reichshofrat) and the Cameral Court (Reichskammergericht) where cases were arbitrated. Similar to the European Court of Justice today, the members of the compound republic could be brought to answer for violations of common laws before the courts. The two central judicial institutions balanced each other as the Aulic Council was connected to the Emperor and the Cameral Court was connected to the Imperial Diet (Axtmann 2003: 133). Not only did princes take each other to court, but their subjects could file law suits against their rulers in an instance beyond the control of their lords. On several occasions the Emperor intervened in territories where, despite the Landeshoheit, the Prince had broken the laws of the land (Randelzhofer 1967: 173–180). The Courts restrained and protected the territorial estates. Contemporary observers and modern scholars alike have emphasized the HRE’s character of a legal order (Rechtstaat) rather than a powerful centralized state (Machtstaat). The idea that relations between the estates should be regulated by imperial law rather than by coercion and military force was central to the HRE’s political purpose and was regarded as a badge of honour. The courts also acted as instruments of “peer surveillance” that moderated conflicts and retained a culture of legal deliberation within the republic. The theoretical possibility of subjects to be righted against their rulers was unique in Europe and it increased the internal loyalty to the Empire. The liberty of all subjects, whether Prince or farmer, and their ability to seek legal redress, was seen as a key value of the system. For example, the treaties of Westphalia (IPO V: 3, 37 /§47 IPM) stipulated the rights of subjects to emigrate due to religious reasons and keep their property. However, during the eighteenth

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century princes sought the status of privilegio de non appellando to establish firmer control over their territories. This status suppressed the local estates’ right of appeal to the imperial courts (Weitzel 1976). The imperial constitution was not conditioned by opposition between Emperor and the Empire but by the constant tension and tug-of-war between the influence of the Emperor and Landeshoheit (Aretin 1997a: 72). I have shown above that the balance between the Emperor and the estates, although central to the Empire, was problematic due to the position occupied by the Habsburgs. Therefore I now turn to an analysis of the Imperial Diet to see how the estates balanced between themselves. The Imperial Diet The Imperial Diet (Reichstag) was the parliamentary assembly of the Empire whose members (except the immediate Imperial Cities) were all estates who held territories originally as fiefs of the Emperor (Wenkebach 1970: 7). Like most other early parliamentary assemblies (Bisson 1966), it was originally irregularly convened by the Emperor to discuss matters of immediate concern, but in 1663 it was made into a permanent body (Schindling 1986). It had earlier been outflanked by the Emperor and the Electors who convened separately (Kurfürstentage) during the early seventeenth century but was considerably vitalized after 1663 (Wilson, Peter 1999: 43). Apart from the surviving rights of the Emperor, the only laws that were binding for all parts of the Empire were those enacted by the Diet and confirmed by the Emperor (Gagliardo 1980: 21). Imperial law and the Diet also provided the legal framework for a large number of “low policy” activities in the field of commerce and trade. It encompassed customs, foreign and domestic trade, transportation, the settlement of debts, coinage and crafts (Wenkebach 1970: 104–159). The Diet consisted of three councils: Electors, Princes and Cities. Importantly, the Emperor did not attend meetings of the Diet. Since the Habsburgs usually held the imperial title they were not allowed to attend the Council of Electors despite being kings of Bohemia. Some matters required unanimity (Leibniz 1988[1677]: 119) but others were put to a vote. Voting took place separately in the three councils and a simple majority was required for a vote to be taken in each council; once taken it was considered binding for all estates of the council (Wenkebach 1970: 14). However there were no clear guidelines as to whether a single council could be overruled by votes taken in the other two councils. If an agreement could not be reached then the Emperor was approached to try to achieve an “amicable compromise.” Should this mediation fail to achieve a compromise, then there was a

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general agreement that two councils could not force a decision upon the third (Wenkebach 1970: 16). This rule was clearly an “undemocratic” but a fundamentally republican way to protect some members from parliamentary domination by others, provided that the council held together. Another restraining institution in the Diet was the formal recognition of Protestant and Catholic parties in the peace of Westphalia which allowed the Diet to divide itself into the Corpus Evangelicorum and Corpus Catholicorum on issues pertaining to religion (IPO V: 1). In such cases, the procedure ititio in partes meant that no majority decisions could be taken but the Diet had to resort to the search for a consensus through “amicable compromise” mediated by the Emperor (Aretin 1997a: 50, IPO V: 52). This procedure was a protective measure that restrained the powers of the Catholic majority vis-à-vis the Protestant minority. Only the Protestant side organized itself as a formal group and they held internal votes with binding majority decisions on how to act in political issues. Defining the extent of issues that could be subjected to ititio in partes was a source of conflict since the Catholic estates wanted to minimize the range of issues whereas the Protestant ones wanted to maximize it (Aretin 1997a: 52). Since ititio in partes blocked collective decisions it could prevent the Empire from meeting external pressures. Religious tolerance of Lutheranism and Calvinism alongside Catholicism was an important aspect of the liberty of the estates (IPO VII: 1/ §47 IMP). After more than a century of violent conflict with religious undertones, safeguarding religious liberty was an essential aspect of pacifying relations within the Empire and a precondition of its survival (Härter 2003). The peace treaties of Westphalia stipulated that every territory of the Empire was to retain, or in some cases revert to, the denomination that had been dominant on 1 January 1624 (IPO V: 2, Aretin 1997a: 44–45). The peace treaties safeguarded religious liberty and acted as implementation functions of the compound republic. Throughout the eighteenth century the balance between Protestant and Catholic princes was jealously watched over, partly because religious liberty might be threatened if one side gained a decisive advantage and partly because of the Catholicism of the Habsburg Emperors. Not only might Protestantism be threatened by Catholic dominance but Catholic dominance was thought by many to lead to a centralization of authority, approaching internal tyranny. Configuration of the members All forms of rule configure their members in terms of (1) their identities; (2) their relations to each other; (3) the relations to the centre; and (4)

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their relations and those of the polity as a whole to external factors. In the HRE all four factors were primarily constituted by Landeshoheit an institution whose “rules [were] disproportionately weighty in constitutive effect”(Onuf 1998: 173). It was a complex concept resembling but not equalling sovereignty (Gagliardo 1980: 4). Elsewhere, it has been translated as “territorial sovereignty.” I prefer to retain the original in order to avoid confusion with absolutist or “Bodinian” sovereignty. It was a right held by all estates defined as “immediate” (Reichsunmittelbar), meaning that they were not legally answerable to any power in their exercise of government except to the constitution of the Empire. The possession of this status granted the right of “supremacy of the land” or Landeshoheit: It was a multi-faceted institution and a set of political-legal rights, a catalogue of noble property rights pertaining to the territory and a definition of the distinct conditions under which it could be transgressed (Osiander 2001b: 272). In his critique of Bodinian and Hobbesian sovereignty, Leibniz explained that Landeshoheit (territorial hegemony) contains the right of war and resembles sovereignty. It was not a complete catalogue of rights: “regal rights [regalia] are excepted, either by express pacts or oaths, or by provincial custom, and that the [Landeshoheit] remains intact nonetheless.” Another actor than the prince might possess rights as diverse as “hunting, mining, hiring, of taxes; perhaps even the right of supreme jurisdiction” (Leibniz 1988 [1677]: 115–116). It was not an absolute right protected by frontiers that no one could violate and hence different from the liberty as formulated by Isaiah Berlin (2002: 211). It was regarded with utmost reverence within the Empire as one of, if not the, jewel in the constitutional crown. Like negative liberty as understood in the republican tradition, it had a strong element of natural rights due to its character as a compound of hereditary judicial and political rights. Landeshoheit forbade the intervention in the internal affairs of a single territory by the Empire as a collective as well as by other principalities as long as the holder had not broken either internal or imperial law (Aretin 1997a: 11, 60, Axtmann 2003: 19). It could, however, be restricted by laws passed by the Diet and by the Imperial Courts (Randelzhofer 1967: 180–193). Landeshoheit was often used to hinder imperial policies that entailed further centralization (Randelzhofer 1967: 97 164–168; 168–180; 180–187; and 187–194). Increasingly during the eighteenth century the possession of Landeshoheit was insufficient for recognition and legitimacy outside the Empire as the European states-system began to assert its importance through the institution of sovereignty. Hence the actors of the Empire were caught in a tension between the European states-system, based on sovereignty, and the imperial one, based on Landeshoheit. This

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situation approximated the situation of parallel systems described in Chapter 2 and is dealt with in full below. The importance of liberty was so great that it became a central part of the German, that is, imperial, collective identity (Hegel 1966 [1802]: 27). The constitution of the Empire was seen as granting a kind of liberty to the German lands that was lacking in other countries (Schmidt, Alexander 2003 and Barudio 1998). This republican ethos fused with a German national identity, thus reinforcing both “liberty” and “Germanness.” These two aspects were fused with an attachment to the Empire and a recognition that its institutional structure safeguarded liberty. This led to an identification of Germanness with an “imperial patriotism” (Reichspatriotismus). Despite all political cleavages, constitutional patriotism constituted a significant source of communal feeling which was important both in fostering internal consensus and in defining external actors as being outside the community of identity and of interests (Osiander 1994: 30–31, 35, 52–53, Schmidt, Peter 1996: 267– 268). It is important to take note of both the existence of a strong collective German/imperial identity and of the fact that “liberty” formed a central part of it. As in the ideal type, liberty was not the only pillar upon which the polity rested and neither was it the only base of the collective identity. If liberty can be considered a vertical bond between the estates, then the bond between Emperor and estates was a hierarchical one. Neither Empire nor Emperor could command loyalty as separate concepts but combined in the formula “Emperor and Empire” (Kaiser und Reich). Not only was a German national identity a strong political factor but it also helped to form an idea of the Empire as an entity that was not reducible to either the estates or the Emperor but was embedded in both (Aretin 1975: 32). Contemporary jurists, such as Althusius, Hoenius and Besold, saw the Empire as a totality or an abstract entity (Staatswesen) (Burkhardt 1992: 108) in which “majesty” (majestats) was located in the estates, the Diet and the Emperor (Eulau 1941: 649). Such contemporary views further support the interpretation of the Empire as a single polity or republic constituted by several members and institutions between which a necessarily irresolvable but manageable tension exists. The tension between liberty and autonomous action should not obscure the fundamental tie between liberty of the estates expressed in Landeshoheit and their status as estates of the Empire. Leibniz argued that “the Sovereignty of the territories are indeed not in contradiction to the recognition of their legal ties through Emperor and Empire. They are rather completely compatible with the unity of the compound state,

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which alongside its members forms a legal personality of its own” (cited in Randelzhofer 1967: 80). The estates held their liberty only by virtue of their status as the estates of the Empire, expressed through the old feudal bond, the Lehnswesen. Hence, as in the ideal type of the compound republic, the very means that restrain the liberty of the members are what ultimately guarantees it. We thus face a polity that was characterized by a tension between its most fundamental conceptual pillars and yet dependent upon the maintenance of this tension in the form of a balance in order to survive. The bond to the “Emperor and Empire” gave the relations among the members of the Empire and between the members and the centre a stronger emphasis on duties than in other forms of rule. Contemporary legal scholars argued that the estates did not amount to sovereigns because of their duties to the Emperor (Klippel 1990: 119). It stands out in this respect in comparison with the European statessystem (as will be shown in the next section) as well as in comparison with the EU. Duties were expressed towards other members in the sense that their Landeshoheit had to be respected, towards the Emperor in the sense that a certain fealty was owed, and towards the estates of each territory. Princes were bound under the imperial constitution to respect the rights of their subject estates and allow them recourse to imperial courts. The duties that a prince had to his subjects were also ties that bound him to the Empire. Hence receiving the status of privilegio de non appellando or assuming sovereignty not only created a new legal order but it also loosened the ties between a principality and the Empire (Klippel 1990: 114–115). The emphasis on duties in combination with the emphasis on liberty upset the balance of the system, which increased incentives to use exit options. Relations of the members to external factors A central aspect of all forms of rule is the organization of the means of violence. The way this aspect, which Chapter 1 argued is central to political life, is configured provides a key to understanding what form of rule a particular entity is. The peace of Westphalia laid out two fundamental rights of the estates: The ius foederis, the right to form alliances with other powers, foreign or domestic (IPO VIII: 2), and ius pacis ac bellum, the right to wage war. The treaties restored these rights provided that neither alliances nor wars were directed against the Emperor or the Empire (IPO VIII: 2). Both rights were liberties that the constitutional arrangements were intended to protect. However, the right to wage war is also an implementation mechanism of the strategic purpose

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of dispersing the authority and means of organized violence. Ius pacis ac bellum had medieval roots in the right and obligation to use organized violence as legal redress. During the Middle Ages this was not only a right but also a constitutional obligation. By using organized violence against other feudal lords or even against the Emperor himself to uphold laws, treaties and agreements, princes of the Empire violated neither the constitution nor the values upon which it rested (Brunner 1981). Rather they obeyed and in fact strengthened it (Brunner 1981: 12–14, 102 Aretin 1975: 32). This tradition lived on in the ius pacis ac bellum and supported the liberty and security of the individual estates. It was in latent conflict with the aim of upholding internal peace and avoiding anarchy, which was contained in the provisions on upholding the Landesfrieden (the peace of the land) (Dickel and Speer 1984–1991 vol 8: 383). The Landesfrieden was defined as a “treaty and a law” that imperial actors should eschew violence and resolve their differences through legal means (Dickel and Speer 1984–1991 vol. 8: 385). The tension between ius foederis and the Landesfrieden corresponds to the tension between strategic purposes and limitations of threats outlined in the previous chapter. The former corresponded to securing the liberty of the members and thwarting the threats of tyranny and oligarchy. The latter corresponded to the aim of securing internal peace and thwarting the threat of anarchy. The Empire was held in a tension between these opposing and therefore balancing ends, both of which were central to its political purpose. The provisions to the treaties made by individual princes and Sweden during the Thirty Years’ War testify to the connection between the exercise of constitutional liberties and loyalty to the Empire. Although signed during a war against other princes and the Emperor, the contracting prince usually stressed that the treaty was not directed against the Emperor as an institution or against the Empire as a polity (Brunner 1981: 12–14, 102 Aretin 1975: 32). Consequently the ius foederis strengthened rather than weakened the Empire as a constitutional polity (Burkhardt 1992: 107). This interpretation contrasts with many other historical and most IR approaches which see the right to foreign alliances as a sign of sovereignty on the part of the estates that effectively spelled the end of the Empire. It was not understood like that by contemporary actors, nor should modern analysts draw this conclusion. The ius pacis ac bellum demonstrates that the compound republic’s strategic purposes differ radically from those of a unitary state. Retaining the members’ capabilities for organized violence and safeguarding the authority to use it is an essential part of the philosophy of the Republic

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rather than a violation of it. The Empire had no monopoly of violence and did not aim to. The Empire also organized a system of collective defence through the imperial war constitution (Reichkriegsverfassung) which regulated the use of organized violence in concert by the estates acting as the Empire (Weigel 1912). It provided the framework of a common foreign and security policy of the estates. The Empire could declare imperial war against a foreign or an internal enemy. Troops could be raised in three ways. Firstly, the largest (“armed”) could lend parts of their standing armies to the common cause. Secondly, the middle or smaller estates or those that did not possess troops of their own put either troops or financial means at the disposal of the Imperial Circles. They were regional organizations incorporating the territorial estates and whose primary function was to raise troops for the imperial army (Papke 1979: 241). The Peace of Westphalia had called for the restitution of the circles in order to protect the peace of the Empire (IPO XVII: 8). The circles also implemented decisions of the Diet (Wilson, Peter 1999: 56–60 and Vann 1975).Thirdly, smaller estates could contribute to the effort financially (Papke 1979: 254, Hegel 1966 [1802]: 41–49). In several campaigns a combination of all three ways was used. The imperial army was financed through a system of “Roman months,” the calculated cost of maintaining the army of 40,000 in the field for a month, requested by the Emperor and voted on by the Diet. Financing as well as declaring war was subject to intense political controversy since concerted action in response to external pressures activated the republican threats to the compound republic. Decisions to block contributions of manpower or money were often justified with references to the threat that centralization of the means of violence might pose to liberty, understood either as Landeshoheit or as religious freedom (Schlaich 1977: 174).

3.3 The Holy Roman Empire and systems in the environment The European states-system With its strong emphasis on the autonomy of the members, the HRE was reminiscent of the European system of states. The similarities meant that imperial actors could over time come to see that the core values of the HRE, like liberty and security, could be as well or better protected outside the Empire through full membership of the European system of states. The similarities were mirrored in the resemblances between

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Landeshoheit and sovereignty and the appearance that the practices of balance of power could be as effective as those of the Empire in restraining conflict. This idea was reinforced by the republican discourse sometimes used to justify the doctrines of European balance of power. During the eighteenth century these assumptions would prove illusory since the Empire and the European system had always been different – the European system changed towards predation and zero-sum conflicts – and since the number of defections decreased the efficiency of the HRE as a political system. Early modern scholars like Voltaire and Rousseau as well as later scholars (A.H.L. Heeren 1819: 11, Watson 1992: 209–213 and 1997, Schroeder 1994) have seen the Empire as making a vital contribution to the stability of Europe due to its restraining and balancing nature. Two of the internal threats to the Empire – tyranny and oligarchy – were also shared by external powers. The former was especially worrying to external actors, as it would mean a considerable strengthening of Habsburg power in Europe. Anarchy in the Empire might also spill over into conflicts that spanned the continent, like the Thirty Years’ War. A stable centre in Europe – constituted by the Empire – was beneficial to stability in Europe as a whole. In that case external actors were also sceptical or directly opposed to a concentration of power under a single centre or to a strengthening of the power of individual great powers, resembling oligarchy. This enabled external actors to play the role of guaranteeing to actors of the Empire that common undertakings would not lead to a realization of the perceived threats. External actors were all the more important in relation to HRE as external balancers since the states-system could not serve as a routine exit option. The European system of the eighteenth century put a strong emphasis on the autonomy of the members, that is, on their rights as opposed to ties between them, i.e. duties. There was a stronger emphasis on privilege in autonomy, both in the sense of liberty (negative freedom) and autonomous action (positive freedom). Both international law and the informal droit de convenance (see below) tied the members of the European system of states. Hence it seems to have certain “republican” features which warrant terms such as the “republic of Europe.” However, there were no institutions of restraint corresponding to those of the Empire; also there was a much greater emphasis on autonomy than on ties. The states-system did not create itself as an entity which limited its efficiency as a legitimate exit option from the HRE. Only individual members could exit as individual actors, there

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was no possibility of an exit from the HRE that would still allow collective action. There was a family resemblance between Landeshoheit, the chief institution in the HRE and sovereignty, its counterpart in the European system of states. Both institutions had their roots in medieval ideas of noble privileges, property rights and liberties (Tellenbach 1936, Bush 1983, Kratochwil 2002). Consequently sovereignty could be perceived as a more extreme institutional form of the values Landeshoheit was built upon. Sovereignty was historically a solution to anarchy of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Bartelson 1995: 139, 164, 243) and the problem of order in a Europe that no longer could be understood within a hierarchical framework. Although similar from a motivational point of view, the two institutions created very different kinds of order on a systemic level. The European system of states constructed the relations between its members on the basis of a combination of the sovereignty of its members and the idea that all European states were united in a respublica christiana or corps politique de l’Europe. The latter idea entailed that they had to obey certain principles of mutual restraint in their mutual relations as opposed to relations with non-Europeans (Kunisch 2004: 110– 111, Little 1989: 94). The combination of positive and negative freedom conferred by sovereignty and the common cultural ties between the European powers gave rise to the complex of ideas and practices called balance of power. This is a central and much contested notion in IR theory (Waltz 1979, Little 1989, Schroeder 1989, Osiander 1994). Rather than seeing it as an abstract mechanism arising in all multi-actor systems, I see it as a distinct cultural practice of the early modern era. The balance of power was ambiguous and contained two contradictory practices: first, a zero-sum game that could only be used for hostile territorial aggrandizement, and second, a restraining and systems-preserving one (Kunisch 2004: 113). To distinguish between the two logics of action, Little (1989) has understood the former as adversarial and the latter as associative. They are distinct ways of defining interests vis-à-vis other powers. In the adversarial tradition interests are defined exclusively self-referentially, entitling to unrestrained expansion. As such the autonomy of each actor is restrained only by the extent of his means. Security is seen as best served by all actors maximizing their own interests so as to achieve a balance out of adversative struggle. When the adversarial balance of power is exercised in its most extreme way it is reminiscent of a Darwinian struggle for mastery.

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In the associative tradition, supported by the institutions of convenance, one’s own interests are formulated as served best (and more justly) by a recognition of the rights and interests of other actors. This is fortified by the recognition that one’s actions are likely to have repercussions of oneself due to the systemic environment (Kratochwil 1982: 12–16 and Little 1989: 94–97). Hence the associative tradition had strong traits of self-restraint which could be perceived by contemporaries as guaranteeing liberty as well as stability. In the strongest formulation of the associative tradition there is an identification between one’s own interests and those of others, fostering systemic stability. This is reminiscent of the imperial patriotism that recognized the intimate dependency of liberty/Landeshoheit on the connection to the Empire. However, the difference between the two traditions of the European states-system was not very distinct, as the oscillation between them during the eighteenth century shows. The tendency to only play the adversarial game became more pronounced after the crises of 1739– 1740 and 1756–1763 culminating in the Polish partitions of 1772–1795 (Sheehan, James 1989: 124). Four factors accounted for the difficulties of retaining incentives for playing the systems-preserving game instead of the zero-sum game. First, the possibility of abusing the system by playing on the likelihood of other actors not defecting from a restraining game (Kratochwil 1982: 16). Second, the absence of an external balancer with an interest in a systems-preserving practice. Britain, whose extra-European interests, colonies and financial resources could have made it a “keeper of the scales,” was primarily interested in keeping a zero-sum game going on the continent and preventing it from ending in a oligarchy by any one power (Sheehan, Michael 1989). Third, the absence of formalized restraining mechanisms or bonds of either horizontal or vertical nature always worked in favour of the zero-sum options against the systemspreserving. Fourth, balance of power is a socio-political practice and hence it needs to be consciously managed by actors aiming towards a certain goal. Both historical and contemporary observers believed erroneously (e.g. Waltz 1979) that it is a mechanical force that will arise automatically due to a certain configuration of units or create a spontaneous and emergent order. The European system constantly presented princes of the Empire with an attractive exit option that did not seem to have negative sideeffects. To assume the identity of a sovereign European state and define one’s interests accordingly appeared to do away with the Imperial institutions of restraint that so often led to paralysis in relation to external

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pressures. The greater emphasis on autonomy in the European system could be seen as a more radical version of Landeshoheit. To actors for whom privilegio and libertas were chief values, sovereignty must have been more appealing than Landeshoheit which carried with it the burdensome connection of fealty to the “Emperor and Empire.” Eschewing the latter and aiming for a crown that bestowed sovereignty must have been seen as a better way to realize the values of Landeshoheit. Given the associative possibilities of the balance of power, it appeared that convenance would preserve one’s existence while the cherished liberty could be protected by sovereignty as well by Landeshoheit. Abandoning the imperial with its republican institutions of protection came at a very high price. Ultimately it was the loss of both liberty and autonomy of most of the estates of the Empire. Although these exit options were present and legal from the point of the imperial constitution, their legitimacy remained in question. The option to act as a European state instead of an imperial estate was not automatically accepted as a legitimate solution to the deadlocks that arose due to the different threats that so preoccupied the Empire. The institutions of the European system allowed actions that were not possible under the imperial one, which led to short-term incentives for power-maximizing with adverse effects in the long run. Since the European system tended to produce a zero-sum game, its institutions became prescribing in the sense that it forced all actors to adjust accordingly. As argued above, the Empire’s relation to the European statessystem in the light of their commonalities leads to the conclusion that a situation of parallel systems with largely similar values does not necessarily lead to cohabitation or mutual reinforcement but can also lead to competition. The imperial system and the European system of states in 1648 The treaties of Westphalia in 1648 nested the HRE in the states-system. The stakes in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) were ordering the European states-system as well as the Holy Roman Empire (Aretin 1997a: 160). The Swedish and French interventions in what was originally an intra-imperial struggle were, at least in part, undertaken to “ensure that the Empire remained a non-aligned and passive force in European affairs; objectives that also accorded with those of many of the lesser German territorial rulers” (Wilson, Peter 1999: 30). The treaties created a bridge between the states-system and the Imperial system by joining the internal constitution of the Empire and structure with “an international agreement intended to bring lasting peace to Europe”

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(Wilson, Peter 1999: 30, IPO I, IV: 57. XVII: 2). The settlement reordered the boundary of the imperial system by making outside powers quasimembers. France and Sweden were appointed guarantors of the peace, which also gave them the status of protectors of the imperial constitution (IPO V: 41). Both had the legal right to intervene militarily in the Empire should the Emperor overstep the boundaries of his competencies as set out in the agreement of 1648 (Aretin 1997a: 22–23). Sweden also acquired territory inside the Empire and thereby a seat at the Diet (IPO: X). It thus became a member of the republic while its identity and interests were completely independent of it. The important point about the quasi-members was that actors whose territory lay outside the Empire and who shared neither the threat perceptions nor the restraining institutions of the Empire became stakeholders in it. Hence actors who were unrestrained by republican institutions entered the Empire. 1648 had brought two outsiders into the Empire and after 1700 the reverse process occurred as imperial actors began to acquire titles and territories outside the Empire. This means they acquired identities that prescribed and allowed actions that were not restrained by the values, laws and rules of the HRE. Thus the HRE began to erode as a form of rule.

3.4 The Holy Roman Empire in world politics A strong republic under external protection 1648–1683 Chapter 2 argued that an external power can support a compound republic by providing safeguards for its constitution and military support that lessen the need for centralization of capacities. Between the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the outbreak of the Dutch war in 1672, the republican structure of the HRE was supported by a benign French hegemony. In this period French influence in the Empire stood at its zenith as many estates saw the country as the guardian of their liberty. Cardinal Mazarin continued the foreign policies of his predecessor, Cardinal Richelieu, whose aim was the creation of a stable European security system centred on and led by France (Weber, Hermann 1997, Dickmann 1963: 308, 310 and Aretin 1997a: 189). The country was politically willing and militarily able to uphold a republican balance. This was the case in Richelieu’s scheme but it would change during the reign of Louis XIV. Correspondingly, the republican purposes were strongly reflected in a number of decisions and institutions. Once Louis XIV assumed power, French strategy changed from a systems-preserving, benign hegemony

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to a zero-sum predatory one. Despite the loss of the external protector, republican elements were maintained in the Empire’s policies and institutions. Gradually, they came under question as the increasingly hostile environment necessitated larger degrees of centralization of power and more cohesive action. The French were not the only external pressure on the Empire. Ottomans invaded Habsburg territories in 1663 and 1683. The empire’s response to the first attempt was characterized by a number of republican safeguards against oligarchy and tyranny. The second invasion occurred after a hard defensive war against France which had cost the HRE its external protector and enforced a higher degree of cohesion. Consequently the collective effort was characterized by fewer conditions and safeguards. The French turn to predation and the Turkish wars strengthened the Emperor’s position as the protector of the Empire but it destabilized the Empire and raised fears of internal tyranny. The electoral capitulation of Leopold I In 1648 the Empire was marked by a general climate of suspicion and insecurity as the estates saw the Emperor as the major threat to the republican constitution of the Peace of Westphalia. The Emperor Ferdinand III died in 1657 and in order to be elected, his son Leopold I had to sign an unusually restrictive capitulation (Aretin 1997a: 184ff, 190). Article XIV compelled him to neutrality in foreign policy issues, that is, to refrain from action. The intention was to prevent Leopold I from allying with Spain, another Habsburg power, which could have enabled the dynasty to dominate Europe. This article lacked long-term strength as Leopold I would later be far from neutral. In 1658 it was a sign of the strength of the republican order and the strong position of the estates. French protection The treaty of Westphalia codified the right of the estates to form alliances with other estates as well as with external powers in order to protect themselves as well as the imperial constitution. Several alliances and associations between estates were formed during the 1650s, all directed against the latent threat posed by the Emperor through his connection with Spain (Aretin 1975: 38). One of them was the Hildesheimer Bund established around Sweden in 1654 (Aretin 1997a: 166, 171). The most important inter-imperial alliance was the League of the Rhine formed in 1658 between the Electors of Mainz, Trier, Cologne and the Palatinate, the princes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, Hesse- Cassel and

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Münster and the King of Sweden as Duke of Bremen and Verden. The aim and organizational form of the League had characteristics resembling the ideal type of the compound republic. Its purpose was to “protect and preserve the Westphalian peace,” provide mutual protection and assistance against violent attacks (Alliance between Mayence et al. 1658 §1, Aretin 1975: 42) and the maintenance of everyone’s enjoyment of rights and the rule of law and in particular the “German Liberty” (Alliance between Mayence et al. preamble and §1). The allies stated that the League was not directed offensively against anyone, in particular not against the Imperial Majesty or the Holy Roman Empire. Neither was it intended to create “partial or universal” instability in the Empire nor to get involved in foreign wars. The allies pledged that they would not give any power reason for aggression and would settle all disputes among themselves by means of imperial law and be content with the settlement (Alliance between Mayence et al. 1658 §1). The signatories strengthened the imperial system by committing themselves to the institutions of the HRE over those of the European system. The League established a common force directed by a War Council on which every ally had a seat. Although all members contributed troops to the force, each ally retained the authority over its own troops in matters relating to command and administration of justice (Alliance between Mayence et al. 1658). This article corresponds to one of the strategic purposes of the compound republic: dispersing the authority and control over the means of coercion among its members. The League declared itself egalitarian since no member had “pre- eminence, more power or right” over any other and that “just confidence” would reign between the members regardless of religion (Alliance between Mayence et al. 1658 §1). The League’s openness to all other Electors and princes of the Empire meant that it was not a closed directorate kind of formation that could turn into a permanent party and be in a position to divide the Empire or to strive for oligarchy within it (Alliance between Mayence et al. 1658 §21). Thus the signatories consciously avoided the republican threats of anarchy and oligarchy. France joined the league in a separate treaty. This document differed on some points from the original. In the French treaty the league was aimed against “all aggressors who would seek to contravene the peace of Westphalia,” a far more proactive formulation than in the German text, which was more defensive and more negatively formulated (Treaty between France and Princes 1658 §2 p.164). Hence the German text was framed in a more restraining way, corresponding to “thou shalt not rules” (Pinder 1968: 90) which circumvent positive freedom rather than limit liberty, in the

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sense of negative freedom. France was obliged not to bear arms “against or within the Empire, nor to act with hostility against the Electors or the princes or against their estates or lands” (Treaty between France and Princes 1658 §V). The King promised to “observe all articles of the peace of Westphalia, assist those who want to observe them and take an interest in the rights and the Liberty of the Electors, the princes and estates of the empire and especially against all those who wish to ... trouble the enjoyment of these rights and liberties” (Treaty between France and Princes 1658 §IV). These articles were implicitly directed against the Emperor. Just like the other signatories of the League, the French King pledged the supply of a stipulated number of troops. All in all, the protection of France given by the treaty to the liberty and security of the estates must have seemed like an appealing way to balance against the latent threat of tyranny posed by the Emperor. The surging east The connection between external threats, the Emperor’s need for assistance and the struggles over the internal political order were three elements that repeatedly interacted in the history of the HRE. In 1660 the Ottomans threatened a large invasion of the Habsburg lands and Leopold I called an imperial deputation in order to ask for assistance. The Elector of Mainz refused and demanded that the Diet be convened in 1663 to deliberate the need to reform the military organization of the Empire and outstanding issues from 1654 as well as assistance against the Turks (Aretin 1997a: 214–215). That the HRE was a compound republic whose primary aim was to safeguard the liberty of its members rather than a “security community” whose primary raison d’être is mutual defence against external threats (Adler and Barnett 1998a) was demonstrated at the meeting not only by the relative indifference shown by the estates to the danger in the east (Aretin 1997a: 220) but by the way the Diet turned the Emperor’s entreaties into a negotiating situation. Three principal constellations dominated negotiations in Regensburg: the Emperor, the League of the Rhine and other estates of the Empire. Divisions among the estates were visible as the princes tried to offer the Emperor a more advantageous electoral capitulation than the one the Electors had forced upon him in 1658. However, the Electors, who wanted to retain their privileges, blocked the discussion (Aretin 1997a: 223). An agreement was eventually reached to grant two instalments of fifty “Roman months” (the sum considered sufficient to field an army for the stipulated number of months), the participation of the army

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of the League of the Rhine supplemented by French forces (Hatton 1976: 23) and an army based on the Imperial Circles to supplement the Emperor’s army. The participation of the auxiliary armies was limited to one year, sufficient for a defensive but not an offensive war –which the Emperor might use to advance his own interests. I argued above that the necessity of centralization of authority makes concerted action problematic for a compound republic. In 1663 this “strategic paradox” was resolved by the guarantee provided by France in the League of the Rhine, its military participation and the safeguards surrounding the joint action. These were contractual stipulations that the centralization was temporary, the control over the means of violence remained with the estates and a series of trustbuilding measures like pledges of information-sharing (Articles 1663 §10), religious freedom (Articles 1663 §6) and equality of troops as well as commanders (Articles 1663 §§8, 2). The conditioned assistance of the League of the Rhine reveals the strength of republican institutions as the estates acted as one body rather than as separate actors and demanded terms for their participation. The treaty was formulated unilaterally and obliged the Emperor to fulfil the articles. None of the articles similarly commit the Electors and princes. The treaty stipulated that although the Emperor equipped the troops (Articles 1663 §§3, 4), authority and control over them strictly belonged to the estates (Articles 1663 §§6, 10). Furthermore, the treaty stipulated that: (1) the Jura Statuum should be discussed in full and that the convened Diet should not be dissolved before this was done; (2) the given assistance was to be considered as voluntary and not lead to any disadvantage to the rights and liberties of the Electors and princes; and (3) the Hungarian estates should be consulted regarding the movements and stationing of troops in the country (Articles 1663 §1 p.464). The motive for including this article in the treaty may have been republican solidarity with the Hungarian estates, a desire to weaken Habsburg power or both. The war was quickly and surprisingly ended by the defeat of the Turks at St- Gotthard and the peace of Vasvar in 1664 (Black 2004: 78. Aretin 1997a: 225). Because the rebellions of 1650 consumed the administration’s efforts Louis XIV did not immediately change French policy. In 1667 he began his first war by invading the Spanish Netherlands, which shocked the Empire. As a consequence French influence waned and the signatories of the League of the Rhine refused to renew the treaty. Relations worsened when the French first occupied Lorraine, an imperial territory, in 1670 and then invaded the Dutch Republic in 1672. The Empire

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coalesced in order to help the Dutch, and the Elector of Brandenburg and the Emperor signed a treaty for the preservation of peace in the Empire. French armies invaded the Empire but were soon outmanoeuvred. Their destruction of the Palatinate while retreating did not coax the Empire into submission but caused it to rally around the Emperor and it made France politically impossible as a protector of the Empire. In sum, the Emperor managed to unite the estates of the Empire in a common effort. The Diet agreed to provide assistance to the Electoral Palatinate and the Imperial Circles successfully raised troops. Some estates, most importantly Brandenburg, contributed troops of their own. Importantly, however, there was no general demand that all estates participate in the war. Some estates, like Bavaria, Hannover and Mainz, did not participate actively, while Münster and Osnabrück were allied to the French in the early phases of the war. The French aggression and the Emperor’s successful defence increased his standing as a protector of the Empire. As a consequence, the material survival of the HRE was reinforced but it became politically unbalanced. Three reasons help us understand why the Empire managed to meet the French threat without activating the strategic paradox: French aggression was seen as a worse threat to the liberty of the estates than the Emperor, the Emperor could draw on the sense of community and loyalty to Empire and Emperor to mobilize the estates (Wrede 2005: 100, 102) and participation in the war was voluntary. The peace negotiations in Nijmegen lasted between 1676 and 1679. The electors and princes signed an agreement to be represented by the Emperor at the negotiations. Although some estates were present there was no discussion of the Empire as a political subject. The Emperor’s right to make treaties on behalf of the Empire was doubtful since Article VIII §2 of the Treaty of Westphalia forbade the Emperor to wage war and make peace without the consent of the Diet. France disputed the Emperor’s right to do so but its credibility as a defender of the liberty of the Empire was spent (Hatton 1980: 12, Duchhardt 1976: 34). The Peace of Nijmegen affected the continued development of the Empire and developments in the European system that in turn affected the HRE. First, the Emperor marginalized the empire and the estates from the European system. In concert with the other European monarchs, the Habsburgs kept the other actors of the Empire, except tenaciously ambitious Brandenburg (Duchhardt 1979b: 53), away from the negotiations. The motivation was that only crowned heads had access to the European negotiating table (Duchhardt 1990: 19). Thereby Nijmegen signaled that the rules of the European system not those of the Empire

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determined participation which required a royal title (Duchhardt 1979a: 54, Schindling 1981: 161–164). The insistence of monarchical precedence in order to have a voice in European affairs and thereby to safeguard one’s security, strengthened the ambitions of electors to win royal titles (Duchhardt 1979a: 54). This realization began a process of corroding the HRE as a political system. Second, the negotiations at Nijmegen saw an increasing acceptance of the idea that a monarch might be compensated for losses as long as he received compensation in the form of territory or money. This development weakened the older idea that a land was not the property of the dynasty to be traded at will. Conceptualizing lands as private holdings of the dynasty were central to the system of trading and partitioning of lands essential to eighteenth- century notions of “balance of power” (Hatton 1980: 9, Kratochwil 2002). Initially, the Emperor, Hannover and Saxony tried to gain compensations for their losses from the smaller estates of the Empire. However, when Leopold realized that it would spell the end of the Empire, he withdrew his demands and curtailed those of the princes (Schindling 1981: 164). The Swabian Circle and the Diet actions as republican institutions of restraint, in the sense of resistance to territorial compensations, played a significant role in preventing them from becoming accepted practices in the Empire (Aretin 1997a: 269). Hence imperial actors broadly agreed to retain the principles of the peace of Westphalia – and thereby republican principles – in resisting territorial secessions (Schindling 1981: 163). Acceptance of the practice of compensation and the concomitant change in property relations in the international system increased the political differences between the European and imperial systems (Schindling 1981: 167, 170, 175). The imperial system, in which disputes were to be settled according to law and not by war or political bartering at conferences and in which lands were not owned absolutely by the lords, became over time a deviation from the increasingly fluid, predatory and political European system (Schindling 1981: 167, 170). In the 1680s, continued French aggression in the West and the Ottomans mobilized to the south-east combined to reshape the Empire’s internal order in the short as well as the long run. Not only was France a military threat but she also bribed the Electoral Princes Brandenburg, Saxony, the Palatinate, Mainz, Cologne and Trier into bilateral alliances which gave her control over the Electoral Council (Duchhardt 1990: 60, Defensive Alliance 1681). France’s strategy to control the Empire had shifted from defence of the Empire’s own norms to coercion and manipulation. In contrast to the era of the League of the Rhine, French

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preferences had shifted in favour of bilateral alliances with powerful estates in order to control and possibly to split the Empire. The strategy of bi- instead of multilateral diplomacy strengthened the trend towards powerful estates acting as individual subjects (see below). Aretin argues that the threat from France strengthened the Empire as it led to a counterreaction, especially from the circles (Aretin 1997a: 273). However, insecurity in the Empire increased since the Emperor’s war aims were not achieved in Nijmegen and as its political system came under pressure. French pressure made reform of the Empire’s organization for collective defence necessary. External pressure and internal reform created new divisions in the Empire. Instead of a dyadic confrontation between Emperor and Estates, a tripartite constellation emerged in which the Emperor, the larger “armed estates” and the smaller estates opposed, balanced and manoeuvred against each other. The positions corresponded to the republican forms or monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. However, the Emperor and the larger estates were more in favour of a multilateral diplomacy within the imperial framework rather than going through the formal imperial institutions. Each position favoured an organization that suited its political programme. The Emperor favoured a central imperial war chest, which the estates viewed with suspicion. The armed estates favoured an imperial army formed by their troops. The estates advocated an imperial army formed by contingents from all estates. Basing the army organization on the Imperial Circles was intended to prevent the larger estates from infringing on the liberties of the smaller ones. The question of reform was complicated by the dependence of the German estates on foreign subsidies, mostly British or French, to raise armies. The outcome of 1681–82 was in accordance with the constitution and with clear compound republic traits but suboptimal efficiency. The Imperial Circles were to raise and equip the army and control its finances. The army could only be fielded for a limited period of time and raised for a specifically stated purpose. Hence it was no standing army placed unconditionally at the disposal of the Emperor but a selfdefence force, as a balancer against the armed estates and as a force that was raised at the decision of each Circle in wars against the French and the Turks (Storm 1974: 84–91). In republican terms, the reformed constitution was a response to external pressure, a balance against the oligarchic threat of the armed estates (Aretin 1997a: 297) and a rejection of the internal tyranny that an army at the disposal of the Emperor might lead to. If imperial defence had been left exclusively to the armed estates, the Empire would have shifted towards oligarchy.

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This reform reveals several important differences between the Empire and the EU that help us understand the different political dynamics in the two polities. First, there was no impartial centre of the Empire but the Habsburgs’ dominance of the office of the Emperor meant that one of the members of the republic was in a more powerful position than all the others, materially as well as legally. Hence the threat of internal tyranny, i.e. centralization under Habsburg rule, was always more acute in the Empire than it is in the EU. Second, the members of the Empire were unequal with regard to defensive capacity against external and internal threats to their liberty and security. This structural trait was more important in the HRE than it is in the EU because of the greater political importance of warfare in the early modern period than in the contemporary one. In combination with the higher degree of warfare during the period it meant that the polity was more vulnerable to division by external powers and to the oligarchic aspirations of the armed estates than the EU may be. In 1683 the Ottomans besieged Vienna and in contrast to 1663, the Empire helped the Emperor ungrudgingly. With the help of a Polish army the combined force inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Turks (MacKay and Scott 1995: 74, Barker 1967). The victory opened up for a Habsburg conquest of Hungary and Transylvania (MacKay and Scott 1995: 75). Central to the Habsburg expansion of power was that the Hungarian crown, previously elective, was made hereditary in the Habsburg dynasty in 1687 (Duchhardt 2003: 255). The contrast to the conditional help offered by the estates in 1663 is striking. What accounts for this change and what were the long-term effects? Firstly, the war with France had increased the emperor’s standing and France’s transformation from protector to aggressor left the estates with little choice than to rally around the Empire. Secondly, fears of tyranny had abated, perhaps due to reassuring reform of the Imperial War Constitution. Thirdly, the empire contained multiple cognitive and normative institutions that could be mobilized. In 1673 and in 1683 the patriotic institutions commanding loyalty to the polity were significantly activated (Wrede 2005: 100, 102). Fourthly, the perception and reality of a threat are not necessarily consistent, especially if realization of the threat lies in the future. Apparently the estates did not perceive joining forces with the Emperor as threatening to their liberty. The long-term consequences were a gradual strengthening of the Emperor’s position and a shifting balance in the system. Hence the actors of the Empire at the time could not foresee the long-term consequences of their short-term actions. Its basic structure of internal

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balancing necessitated more carefully managed mutual restraint than was the case in 1683, as we will see below. Defeating the Turks increased the Emperor’s standing in the Empire. It also expanded the power base of the Habsburgs outside the Empire, which meant that they became less dependent on the Empire, less restrained by its institutions and also less interested in it since their strategic interests shifted focus. Exits, oligarchy and corrosion 1688–1714 French aggression continued relentlessly throughout the 1680s, occupying Luxemburg in 1684. As a result the estates of the Empire closed ranks. Bavaria, Brandenburg and Saxony broke their alliances with France and signed new ones with the Emperor (Aretin 1997b: 22). The Laxenburg Association was expanded into the League of Augsburg consisting of the Emperor and the Circles of Bavaria, Burgundy, Franconia and Upper Rhine with Sweden and the Saxonian Duchies as associated members (Aretin 1997b: 23–24). A dispute over succession in the Electoral Palatinate caused the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697). Its longterm consequences were to further undermine the HRE’s character as a compound republic. The political constellations in the empire became increasingly dyadic as the large estates faced off against the Emperor, marginalizing the institutions of the Empire, the smaller estates and the corporate bodies. When France invaded the Empire in 1688 (Aretin 1997b: 26.27) the Diet was blocked by conflict over the ninth Electorate (see below) and no collective actions could be taken. In this grave situation four of the armed estates, Brandenburg, Saxony, Braunschweig-Lüneburg (Hanover) and Hesse- Cassel, took defence against the French into their own hands (Secret Agreement 1688). They raised armies and taxes without the consent of the Diet or the Emperor and managed to stop the French invasion (Aretin 1997b: 30 and MacKay and Scott 1995: 42). The event showed that in the midst of a political crisis, defence of the Empire was possible only by sidestepping the official institutions. These actions were clearly exits from the constitutional structure of the Empire and raised the threat of an oligarchic development as it strengthened the position of the large estates vis-à-vis the constitution. Bypassing the constitution was ambiguous to the survival of the HRE. While fostering the survival of the Empire as a political system, the actions weakened its political survival as a compound republic. The four princes performing this extra-judicial action motivated their actions with a secret treaty, carefully pointing out that they were protecting the polity of the Empire (Secret Agreement 1688 preamble, §1). However, protecting the

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integrity of the empire was not synonymous with preserving its character as a compound republic. At the Peace of Ryswick in 1689 which concluded the Nine Years’ War, the Emperor again excluded the imperial estates from any influence at the peace conference, although they had supported the HRE’s war effort, thus playing off its status in the European system against the estates that were barred from the European system (Duchhardt 1990: 23, Hegel 1966 [1802]: 59). As the position of the Emperor became stronger, conflicts sharpened between the large “armed” estates, many of whom had electoral rank, and the smaller estates, many of whom lacked armed forces of their own. This tension was a structural feature of the HRE but in the 1680s and 1690s it threatened the integrity of the Empire as a political system as the armed estates combined two strategies to strengthen their political status: gaining pre- eminence in the Empire and acquiring royal titles outside the Empire. In 1692 the House of Lüneburg-Hanover was elevated to Electoral status, partly in exchange for contributing troops against French in 1688 and partly since it threatened to join forces with France (Press 1986: 55). Creating another Elector sparked a constitutional crisis for substantive as well as procedural reasons. Firstly, it shifted the balance between Electors and Princes in favour of the former. Secondly, although it should have been put to all three Colleges of the Diet, the issue was only decided by the Emperor and the Electoral College. The Princes protested vehemently and branded the action as a seizure of power that would transform the Empire into an oligarchy (Agreement between the Princes 1701). The extra-legal action was also identified as injuring the Empire as a constitutional polity. As mentioned above, the issue blocked the Diet for a decade, but eventually the opposition fell apart. The Emperor and Electors had closed ranks over the issue, and British and Dutch support for Hanover and the coming of another war with France in 1700 made resistance fruitless. Interpreting this episode with regard to its consequences for the viability of the Empire presents problems. On the one hand the process took place within the Imperial system and Hanover used its institutions to gain status and authority. On the other, the procedural norms and the constitutional law of the Empire were violated. The process changed the form of the Empire, which was also mentioned in one of the protests signed by the princes. It seems to be an inversion of the concept of the coup d’état, since while the procedure was illegitimate – thereby abusing the political institutions – the end, Electoral status, was a legitimate one (Bartelson 1997, McKay and Scott 1995: 99). The result as well as the process changed the political system of the Empire.

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The existence of a new Elector strengthened the council of Electors, thus disturbing the balance between Electors and princes. The process which had bypassed the princes, the Diet and the Circles also shifted the balance in favour of the Electors especially the armed estates since the strongest Prince, Hanover, turned himself into an Elector. Thus it strengthened the development of what contemporaries understood as “oligarchy” or, in terms of the framework of this chapter, a constellation of conflict between the large estates and the Emperor. The association of the Imperial Circles saw a resurgence after the Nine Years’ War due to the precarious security situation of the smaller estates of the west and the south-west (Aretin 1997b: 33–34). Two concerns united them, defence against France, and defence and strengthened authority vis-à-vis the armed estates. The institutional advantage of the armed estates had to be neutralized to preserve the balance within the Empire and its character of a compound republic (Aretin 1975: 34, Schröcker 1975: 72–73, Wines 1967: 9, 11, 20–21, 24). Circles representing smaller estates protested that delegating the task of imperial defence to the armed estates moved the polity towards oligarchy and Protestant domination. Instead they believed that military organization on the basis of the Circles “would be more useful to the Emperor and the Empire” (in Endres 1983: 612). The associations between the circles tried to sustain a certain idea of the Empire. It was an understanding of the “Emperor and Empire’ ” formula that differed from that of the Viennese court who stressed the obligation and submission of the estates to the Emperor and from that of the “armed estates” who tended towards liberty for themselves but ignored the smaller estates. The latter envisioned an extension of the Circle-based organization to the entire Empire to strengthen its constitutional and republican character and restrain the autonomy of the armed estates (Schröcker 1975: 73, 75). The Circles that signed the Frankfurter Association in 1697 pledged mutual assistance and help to maintain each others’ “imperial liberty” (Reichs-Libertät) by establishing a military force under the “auspices of the Emperor” on the basis of the imperial constitution (Agreement for Association 1697 §§4, 5, 8). Troops were to be financed and maintained separately but on occasion be placed under a joint commander-in- chief (Agreement for Association 1697 §§4, 11) These traits were similar to the conditions of the League of the Rhine analysed above in the sense that both bear resemblance to the strategic purposes of the compound republic. However, the strengthening of the large estates within the Empire and their simultaneous emergence from it continued. Due to rules of

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dynastic inheritance a number of Imperial actors began to acquire titles and territories outside the Empire. The Habsburgs had held the crown of Hungary since 1526 but made it hereditary in 1687. In 1697 the Elector of Saxony was elected king of Poland (Czok 1997: 189–207). In 1701, the Elector of Brandenburg obtained the title “king in Prussia,” a duchy that lay outside the Empire’s borders (Aretin 1997b: 112). In 1714 the Elector of Hannover became king of Great Britain. In 1718 the House of Hesse- Cassel obtained the crown of Sweden. These four princes were the ones who intervened on their own in 1688, defending the Empire and bypassing its constitution, and who supported the readmission of the Emperor as king of Bohemia in the Electoral College (Granier, Gerhard 1954: 136–152, 218–220). The process both promoted oligarchy within the Empire and contributed to its erosion as a political system. This development was detrimental both to the survival of the Empire as a compound republic and as a political system. In contrast to other actors the Imperial-European powers spanned two systems of identity and action with different logics. In this way external institutions became entrenched as constant exit options for identity, interest and action. In contrast to the period 1648–1700, the states-system was as relevant as the Empire after 1700 as a system for understanding the world, moulding threat perceptions and means to respond. Obtaining royal titles strengthened the position of these actors vis-à-vis other Imperial estates in three ways. First, they gained access to the European system of action as full members. The institutions of this system could be used against the other estates, for example at peace conferences. Second, having royal titles strengthened them as alliance partners for external powers, meaning that they were more likely to receive British, French and Dutch subsidies that were necessary to fight prolonged wars (Anderson, M.S. 1970). Third, to some degree the royal titles emancipated the holders from the restraining institutions of the Empire as they now could act as subjects of the emerging European public law. The War of Spanish Succession 1700–1714 In the War of the Spanish Succession, which involved most of the European great powers, the Empire once again went to war. Most estates rallied around the Emperor and the “Grand Alliance” assembled to fight France. Even the smaller estates, who had serious misgivings against the Emperor because of the policies of the past decade, joined the alliance. The exceptions were Bavaria and the Electorate of Cologne who allied with France. Two aspects of the war stand out as successes for Empire:

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the high degree of unity in facing the external threat and the agreement to brand Bavaria and Cologne as traitors in 1706. This can be interpreted as strengthening the Empire as a political system since its members united against a transgression of its political norms and in favour of a common understanding of its purpose. In contrast to the Empire, the EU lacks a codified procedure for judging an action of a member state illegitimate. Success came at a high price for the Empire since the terms of alliance strengthened the emergence of the larger estates, including Austria, out of the Empire (Aretin 1997b: 141). The Empire’s war raged on for fourteen years until 1714, although Britain and the Netherlands had signed the Peace of Utrecht with France in 1713. The Emperor as well as the armed estates profited from the peace whereas the estate-based position was severely weakened. The sea powers as well as the Emperor were uninterested in including the association of the Circles in the peace negotiations (Aretin 1975: 61). Although present at the negotiations, their interests were ignored by the allies and by the Emperor (Duchhardt 1976: 53). After the war the smaller estates were marginalized in the HRE, demonstrated by the association which they entered with the Emperor after 1714. It subjected them to the Emperor and hence they lost their liberty as autonomous actors (Aretin 1975: 62, Wines 1967: 22, 29 Storm 1974: 107–111, Aretin 1997b: 155). The Emperor made substantial gains in Italy but his position in the Empire weakened as Hanover, Saxony and Prussia acquired foreign titles and rose in importance (McKay and Scott 1995: 99). There is a wide consensus that the Peace of Utrecht confirmed the strength of Britain and that the balance of power system sponsored by her gained predominance in Europe. However, interpretations of the consequences diverge. From the perspective of the HRE the settlement was neither the result of a consensus nor that Britain emerged as a new hegemon after the fashion of Spain or France (Holsti 1991: 79). The French hegemony under Richelieu and Mazarin, which was no less self-interested, had taken the form of plans for an organized peace system and was expressed in the language of seventeenth- century republicanism (Malettke 1994: 275ff). All kinds of hegemony require purpose, or political rationale, and to be effective it requires internal political support and it requires external acceptance. The notion that the actors under French hegemony after 1648 and under British after 1714 were protected by the respective systems provided the rationale and acceptance in both cases. By contrast, the British hegemony after Utrecht expressed itself in the language of “balance of power” (Peace Treaty of Utrecht 1713). However, I would not concur in seeing this

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either as an early collective security arrangement (Clark 2005: 75; Holsti 1991: 79) or as the emergence of a notion of systemic requirements of self-restraints or a “common good.” Instead Utrecht was the beginning of a British- dominated global system that overlaid (Buzan 1991) the European sub-system which organized itself according to new balance of power institutions (McKay and Scott 1995: 95, Duchhardt 1976: 71, 72–73). The importance of the extra-European system and Britain’s paramount role in it had tremendous effects both on the European system and on the Empire which now developed into a nested sub-sub-system of the global one. Ascendancy in the global system gave Britain financial superiority which enabled her to effectively “run” the European system by subsidizing continental armies. This enabled the balance system in which Britain set the limits on the expansion of all European powers. There could be no hegemonic continental power that might enforce schemes of collective security similar to Richelieu’s system of the early seventeenth century. The British policy of balance required several large and consolidated powers that were roughly evenly matched in strength (McKay and Scott 1995: 95), which disadvantaged the small and medium-sized powers of the Empire and the Empire itself. Clark (2005: 76) argues that Utrecht established the notion of equality of states: “the idea of a system itself and its cognate notions of state autonomy and equality.” Although monarchs were now equals in contrast to earlier ways of ranking powers (Randelzhofer 1967: 207), this equality disqualified non-monarchs, such as the German estates and associations, from membership in and protection from the international society. The dominance of the great powers also qualifies this judgement (Black 1990: 58). The European system changed after Utrecht and practices of compensations and trading of territories replaced older notions of territorial inviolability. This meant less material security for the smaller territories of the Empire and decreased autonomy for the medium ones as the great powers struggled to keep abreast with each other – the only means by which they could do so was acquisition of territory and strengthening of internal control. Thus, British interests in the global system changed the way interests were constituted in the European system and, in turn, those changes constituted further changes in the imperial one. Between 1679 and 1714 the Holy Roman Empire as compound republic was weakened by a series of actions that can be interpreted as similar to coups d’état as they sidelined the constitution without destroying the polity. I have shown that the peace negotiations after the wars of 1672– 1679, 1688–1697 and 1700–1714, the sidestepping of the constitution by

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the four armed estates in 1688 and the elevation of Hanover to Electoral status were the most significant of these events. These actions can be understood as processes in which raison d’état, contingency and balance of power broke through a legalistic and polycentric political order. Hence it was analogous to the processes that undermined the Roman republic (Meier, Christian 1997). In all of these cases, the institutions and political discourses of an external system, the European system of states, enabled the actions. In other words, it enabled imperial actors, most importantly the Habsburg Emperor, to establish a state of exception in which his agency was unrestrained by the constitution of the Empire. Above, I argued that when four large estates obtained royal titles they also obtained the means of creating exceptions in relation to the imperial constitution. Chapter 1 argued that the political viability of a system depends on its ability to sustain its political purpose. Over time the repeated exceptions to the imperial constitution amounted to a failure not only in but also of the system. I also showed that external actors continued to play a significant role in constituting the conditions for action in the Empire. No longer was the balance in the Empire sustained by an external protector, but Britain was able to lead the way in the implementation of balance of power as an end in the Empire. These actions changed the political form of the Empire from a compound republic to a confederation of actors no longer restrained by republican institutions. Note that this form of rule did not amount to a fully developed system of states. An important aspect of these processes was that the Empire as a political unit was not destroyed or abolished, but its content was changed which meant that the meaning of the process was difficult to ascertain for contemporary actors. Firstly, the Empire’s political purpose as a compound republic based on selfrestraint and liberty, which it had had since the peace of Westphalia, was thereby destroyed. This occurred as more and more estates lost their liberty. Secondly, another process begun to gradually run parallel to the first one: the material safety of an increasing number of estates deteriorated until they eventually were assimilated into other units. “Imperial Harmony” versus balance of power This chapter has dealt with two problems: whether the Empire conformed to the ideal type of the compound republic and how the Empire as a political system was eroded by the European state-system. The reception of the notion of balance in the Empire between 1648 and the 1760s illuminated both problems. The changing reception can be divided into three periods roughly similar to the periodization of the chapter.

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Until 1648 the normatively ideal conditions between the actors of the Empire were not understood as “equilibrium” or “balance.” Instead more organic metaphors were used such as “unity and good harmony of the Imperial edifice,” “repose of the Empire” or “old German trust [Vertrauen] between head and members” (in Fenske 1990: 965). Hence the political order of the Empire was regarded in a qualitatively different way than the political order of the European system (Viroli 1992: 288). Between 1648 and 1672 the concept of “balance” established itself rapidly in the Empire. However, the central importance of liberty in the imperial system determined that balance as a political concept was understood differently than in the European system (Fenske 1990: 963). These expressions were also used in the princely protests against the elevation of Hannover to Electoral status (Preliminary Agreement ... 1700 §2, Agreement 1701 §2). In the European system “balance” was understood as an end in itself, while in the Empire it was seen as a means with which the “German liberty” could be safeguarded. Furthermore, balance between the estates was a means to strengthen the common body politic of the Empire, not a means by which several different body politics held each other in check (Fenske 1990: 967) The concept of balance was at this time mostly used to describe relations between external powers or between these and imperial estates. It was mostly used by Brandenburg, whereas it was alien other imperial estates that were more oriented towards the Empire (Fenske 1990: 966–967). Hence, although “balance” was used it was in a different sense than in the European system. After the peace of Utrecht in 1713 the concept of balance and specifically balance of power was established as a general institution of the European system. Balance of power was more or less forcibly introduced in the Empire by British intermediaries in the peace of Rastatt/Baden 1714. Actors of the Empire were primarily concerned with the balance in and of the Empire and only secondarily with that of Europe (Fenske 1990: 980). However the shift from a republican conception of “harmony” to a balance of power was bound up with a shift from seeing the Empire as a political order qualitatively different from the European system to seeing it as a regional sub-system of the same political order. An Austrian document from 1761 cautioned against not standing up to Prussia as the consequences might be that England lost control over the system which would then pass to Prussia (Fenske 1990: 980). The contrast between the huge cognitive difficulties that envoys from the Empire had in understanding the European system of states whose rules confronted them at the peace conferences of Nijmegen,

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Ryswijk and Utrecht (Schindling 1981), and the thought of Fredrick the Great in the 1750s is also indicative of the change undergone in the Empire (Meinecke 1998: 296, 304, 310–311). The Empire ceased to be a separate system when the balance or “harmony” in the Empire was no longer regarded as a means to support its values, that is, liberty and a harmonious coexistence in the body politic, but only as a part of and stake in the general European balance. Such a shift also affected the Empire as a compound republic; no longer were its members understood as joined in a separate republican polity but as individual parts of the European system of states. The republican tension between agency and restraint had tilted in favour of the former. With it, the Holy Roman Empire had begun to change from a polity that cannot be adequately captured in terms of “state-systems of state” to a number of autonomous actors. Leading the way in this long process of emergence were of course Austria and Prussia who by the 1750s most clearly could be described as “states” in a “system of states.” This emergence was incompatible with the analytical description of the Empire as a compound republic system, an intrinsic part of which is the restraining function. However, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, republicanism was flowering as a political and legal philosophy in the form of the Reichspublizistik. The west and south-west still functioned as a compound republic (Aretin and Hammerstein 1997) but with the major actors (Austria, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Saxony and Prussia) merging into the states-system, the Empire as a whole was no longer be said to be a compound republic. Epilogue: the long civil war and the decline of the republic 1740–1763 The first decades after the Peace of Utrecht were relatively peaceful, but between 1740 and 1763 the Empire was shaken by a long civil war consisting of the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). The interim period appeared to contemporaries and to modern historians as a truce between two wars. The wars and the subsequent annexation of the lands of the smaller estates demonstrate that the Empire no longer functioned as a compound republic. The first war was fought between the large armed estates and the Habsburgs and their respective foreign allies following the extirpation of the male line of the imperial dynasty in 1740. The war saw a complete absence of restraining systemic functions, a sign of the earlier breakdown of the compound republic. It also saw the short-lived (1742–1745) establishment of a non-Habsburg Emperor, Charles VII of Wittelsbach (Aretin 1997b: 439–441 and Kunisch 2004: 197). Bavaria and Saxony

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sought the imperial throne and tried to conquer Habsburg lands. The scale of the fighting and the fact that three of the large estates and the Habsburgs were fighting each other makes war tantamount to internal anarchy, which a compound republic is intended to prevent (Anderson 1995: 84). Ousting the Habsburgs from the office of the Emperor weakened the restraining role the Empire had had on them. Historians often emphasize the Habsburgs’ interest in retaining the Empire to influence and restrain the estates and the interest of the smaller estates in preserving the Empire for their protection. However, it was in the interests of all estates to restrain the Habsburgs, the Empire’s most powerful member. The association of the Habsburgs with the office of the Emperor ensured that they would follow imperial rules, although occasionally stretching them. Without the obligations that the office entailed, the Habsburgs, as kings of Bohemia and Hungary, were far more unrestrained (Schmidt, Georg 1999: 251). Thus the ambitions of Charles VII to create a more “republican” Empire were misguided as it left the most powerful member outside the institutions that could restrain its agency (Aretin 1997c). Habsburg efforts to break up the hostile coalition by negotiations with France, and not by use of any imperial institutions or actors, demonstrate the extent to which the Empire had turned into a sub-system of the European one (Anderson 1995: 84). Facing breakdown in 1740, Austria recovered and came out of the peace treaties in 1745 and 1748 with its holdings intact, except for Silesia (McKay and Scott 1995: 165–166, Kunisch 2004: 185–203). The Seven Years’ War (1757–1763) was Austria’s vengeance against Prussia and an attempt to rob it of its European status. France, Russia, Saxony and Sweden allied with the Habsburgs and Britain-Hanover supported Prussia (McKay and Scott 1995: 189–192). Although almost destroyed, Prussia emerged victorious in the peace of 1763 which established Austro-Prussian bipolarity as the axis of politics in the Empire, replacing the earlier “oligarchic” constellation (Schmidt, Georg 1999: 264). Given the importance of the European balance of power for all actors and of the global struggle between Britain and France for the war in Europe, the Seven Years’ War could be understood as taking place outside the old imperial system, and this, in combination with the fact that it was fought on German/imperial soil, marks it as a major war in which the Empire was of little consequence even in its own territory. Hence, from a security point of view the imperial system had become redundant. Of the imperial actors, only Austria and Prussia were principal antagonists. This increasingly dominant constellation was a bipolar oligarchy and conditions approaching “tyranny” awaited the units that

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were assimilated into the two protagonists (Aretin 1997c: 108). In fact, in 1767 Emperor Joseph II described the Empire as a collection of princes between which no common good could be exercised (in Neuhaus 1997: 131–132). After the breakdown of institutions of republican restraint large estates like Hanover, Prussia and Saxony absorbed several smaller estates (Schmidt, Georg 1999: 278, 290). As the core purpose of compound republics is to safeguard the existence and liberty of all members, these processes signal the complete disappearance of republican norms. A similar development was the schemes launched by Austria and Prussia for trading exclaves in exchange for territories adjacent to the core holdings. (Meinecke 1998: 318). These plans were curtailed, not by imperial institutions but by the interests of European powers to maintain the balance of power (McKay and Scott 1995: 65, 218, 230). The events of the latter part of the eighteenth century did not terminate the Empire; that was accomplished formally in 1806 under intense pressure from Napoleon. The compound republic erected at Westphalia was however long gone. In a different form republican traits would resurface in the German Confederation which was created in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, but that is another story.

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4 A Solitary Republic: The United States of America 1776–1865

4.1 Self-evident truths? The EU is often compared to the United States of America (e.g. Kagan 2003, Nicolaidis and Howse 2001) and rarely, if ever, in favour of the former. This practice, particularly regarding the capacity to act internationally, has been criticized as unfair and misleading (Jørgensen 1997, Smith, Michael 1996). In Chapter 1 I pointed out how misleading it is to compare the EU with sovereign states with regard to capabilities and purposes. To an even greater degree, differences between the modern United States and the EU are so considerable with regard to security, defence and international action that it is hard to see how the comparison could give us any new insights about the EU. Comparisons between the EU and the antebellum (pre-1865) USA sometimes seem promising since the states of the American Union had a greater degree of autonomy than they have today (Delaney 2004, Glencross 2009). While such comparisons may provide heuristic mileage in some fields, in relation to the problem of action and viability in world politics they are misleading. An explicit focus on the organization of the authority over and capabilities for warfare and action in world politics demonstrates substantial differences between, on the one hand, the USA and, on the other, the HRE and the EU. Already by the end of the eighteenth century the problems of coordination and international agency that we find in the HRE and the EU were not present in the USA. Since its foundation the USA was essentially different from the two other compound republics covered in this book. First, the states of the American Union could not conduct their own foreign and security policy. Because the states did not act vis-à-vis systems in the environment there was no possibility of shifting systems 92

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of action. There were no legitimate exit options, and no need for them. This meant that the threat of systemic erosion by defections or corrosions through manipulation by external actors was neutralized. Second, the states were disarmed to a much greater degree in the HRE and EU. This was to become increasingly clear after the war of 1812–1814 against Britain. Although the states were several entities joined in one entity (Leibniz 1988 [1677]: 117) in the republican fashion, they lacked the authority and capabilities over the means of armed force – apart from the militia. The states’ possession of this core aspect of political power was thus compromised, which strongly affected internal and external politics. Hence the USA was not as strongly dualist (Poggi 1978) as the HRE and the EU. There were no material threats to the survival of the USA after 1812 which meant that the system was not forced into trade- offs between protecting the liberty of the states and protecting them materially. Third, there was no previous history of war between the states, which characterized politics in the HRE and characterizes the EU. The need for protection from other states was less acute than in our other cases and hence there was less need for restraining institutions and for the states to be able to “ally between themselves and externals” (IPO VIII: 2) to safeguard security and liberty. Liberty was and is a core value of the American form of rule but in contradistinction to the HRE and the EU it was not defined as the freedom to pursue foreign policy but as freedom in intra-state matters. Fourth, the United States did not suffer from the problems of the HRE and the EU in acting towards actors in its environment. Federalism allowed the USA to function both as a system between its component states and constitute itself as an actor, which is the very operation that was problematic for the HRE and is for the EU. In the war of 1812–1814 against Britain, the United States displayed compound republic traits. The war effort was based on a substantial contribution from the state militias. Some governors refused to send their militias to war and, although mobilized, some militia commanders refused to join the offensive into Canada. Some states even claimed that the war could lead to internal tyranny. In subsequent wars the state level and their recalcitrant militias were sidestepped by the federal government which chose to rely on the army. Because the war resulted in the discrediting and eventually the dissolution of the federalist party, the possibility of the USA developing into a polity with greater safeguards and authority for the states was closed. In this regard, the Civil War (1861–1865) was more of an epilogue to

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the dismantling of the compound republic (in the sense of this book) than the dismantling event itself. The configuration of the USA as a form of rule was shaped partly through internal creations, most importantly the invention of federalism, a system of politics that nested and outflanked the inter-state system of politics in the American Union, and partly by the constitution of its environment. Still, the comparative study of the HRE, the USA and the EU yields important insights in the historical variations of compound republic forms of rule. This chapter will demonstrate that the USA is neither exceptional, an entity sui generis, nor is it equivalent to a European state or empire. It is unusual within a hitherto unrecognized form of rule, the compound republic. There were strong republican elements in the antebellum period in terms of political philosophy, discourse and institutions and the existence of autonomous units within a greater public sphere. Both Federalists and their opponents used republican concepts in the debates on the constitution in the 1780s. The Publius trio of Hamilton, Jay and Madison used the republican threats of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy to gather support for the federalist programme. Their analysis of the security situation facing the American states resembled the predicament of the HRE after 1648 and the nascent European project of the 1950s. However, the solution they created differed radically from the systems created in the HRE and the EC. These differences are demonstrated by anti-federalist resistance, the institutional composition of the USA and the ways in which the USA successfully went to war during the antebellum era. American political thought, as well as research on American history, is divided into two large camps (Hutchcroft 2009, Morgan 2007: 57, McCoy, Scarano and Johnson 2009: 8–9). The first stresses American exceptionalism and has an optimistic trait. It tends to view American history as harmonious and largely successful. The second tends to emphasize similarities between the USA and other countries and has a more pessimist and/or critical tenor. Instead of harmony it rather emphasizes tensions and conflicts and highlights oppressive streaks of US history. This division is also found in relation to the central concern of this chapter, what form of rule antebellum United States was. The first position emphasizes the republican and therefore anti-state traits of the USA (Ostrom 2008, Deudney 1995, 2004, 2007, Hendrickson 2009, Onuf and Onuf 1993). The second emphasizes that the early modern American polity was in crucial respects similar to the fiscal-military states in Europe (Edling 2003, Higginbotham 2005).

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This chapter steers a middle course between the two rival interpretations. The question of what form of rule the antebellum USA was cannot be determined only through structural analysis or by limiting the inquiry to the period of the founding. Instead the relations of the USA to other systems in its environment must be taken into account. The study of structures will be sterile unless one inquires what actions these structures enable, prescribe or prohibit (March and Olsen 1989: 23). A close examination of the expansion of the USA and its wars against Spain (1810s), Britain (1812–1814) and Mexico (1846–1848) demonstrates a considerable capacity for warfare and conquest. Research on the nineteenth- century expansion of the USA is also divided between exceptionalist and normalizing interpretations (McCormick 2009: 63–64). The former emphasizes the anti-imperial heritage of the USA while the latter argues that the USA acted like all other rapacious empires founded by Europeans. The republican features most important to the viability of the USA were not the normative-Polybian rhetoric of Hamilton, Madison and Jay. While undoubtedly important, the ones that I have called the systemstheoretical side of republicanism were more important for the viability of the USA. Federalism was introduced as a layer of politics that nested the preceding state layer. This innovation bears many similarities to the republican ontologies in which politics are organized in a series of nesting systems each binding and embedding the other, like the ascending corporations of Christian Wolff’s civitas maxima. Federalism as a nesting system forestalled the risk that the Union would be divided along state lines and open to exploitation from external powers. If the inter-state layer had been the only one, the USA would have seen very different patterns of conflict, both internal and external, and its capacity for dealing with systems in its environment would have been very different.

4.2 Towards the new world Novus ordo seclorum On the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States from 1782 appears the phrase novus ordo seclorum – “a new order for the ages.” In 1782 this was a statement of a political programme but it serves to direct our attention to some of the factors that were constitutive for the development of the United States. Certain unique geohistorical factors pertaining to the place of the Union in the global space and in world history made political conditions in America radically different from European

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ones and enabled solutions that simply were not possible in elsewhere – as noted in Washington’s farewell address (Ryan 2000: 42). The United States was sufficiently distant from other powers to prevent efficient military power projection on their part, either by land or by sea (Deudney 2007: 169). However, the Eastern seaboard was sufficiently close to Europe and Africa to enable transport of goods and people. The Atlantic thus acted both as carrier and barrier. Certainly a European power with sufficient sealift capacities could cause serious harm to American shipping and trade as well as to mainland settlements – which the British demonstrated in the war of 1812–14. However, geography was a strong impediment against external conquest. To the West, a number of natural factors gave the fledgling polity an abundance of “strategic depth.” From the deserts of the south-west to the heavily forested Appalachians, the natural environment protected the American states from other European powers and Native Americans until demographics and technology could weigh in on their side to allow the great westward expansion. Frontier settlements frequently engaged in hostilities with Native American communities but these could not amass a threat on a scale even remotely close to the security conditions prevailing in early modern Europe. Other factors that have seen less discussion in previous research pertain to the place of the USA in history. The most important one is the possibility of, as the seal says, creating a new polity in 1776–1787. Naturally, the colonial heritage had shaped ideas and institutions which constrained and enabled the founders when welding the distinct settlements and colonies into a political whole (Huntington 1968: 135, 136). Still, the relative youth of the original thirteen states contributed to the possibility of innovation in 1776–1787. Although the states were different in cultural, political and economic character, these differences were substantially less than the differences between the future member states of the EU in 1945. Relative youth also meant that there was little in the way of previous forms of rule which had to be accommodated. This contrasts to the Dutch Republic, where republicanism always had to cohabit and compete with monarchical institutions (Dull 1987: 160). The coinciding of the American independence with the Enlightenment should not be underestimated. The point here is not to indulge in flights of fancy or counterfactuals but rather to point out that the founders were fortunate in time as well as in space. Prior to the American and French revolutions rebellions were largely restorative in character and did not seek to break away from history and found a new political order (Koselleck 2004b). The period 1750–1850 was one of profound

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transformation and innovation of political concepts. It was also a time when the understanding of history itself was transformed (Koselleck 2004a). The conception that history was essentially characterized by the same laws and principles since the ancients became undermined. This idea, which had hitherto dominated Western thinking, entailed a view of time and of action in history as essentially timeless. The onset of modernity entailed the opposite kind of thinking, with mankind entering into a new era in which history could no longer serve as the exemplar and guide to present and future action. The most important corollary was that mankind was no longer bound by historical forms and could reshape the world in any image. The United States was thus born in an age where the horizon of expectation had changed dramatically to include the possibility of radical future transformation. Not only was the future a tabula rasa, but so was the horizon to West. The lands beyond the Appalachians were not unpopulated, but except for the decaying Spanish Empire, no significant polities existed there that could challenge the material survival, political legitimacy or claims of the United States. The absence of a strong European or native presence in terms of population, organization or capacity not only freed the USA from military threats and enabled expansion; it also allowed the uninhibited moulding of political organization within the annexed territories. New states could be created and thus the own polity could be shaped according to a design of American statesmens’ own volition. This possibility was of course out of the question for European statesmen in 1945 and a similar situation had not existed in Central Europe since the 1200s when German soldiers and settlers pushed eastward, taking their laws, institutions and culture with them (Teschke 2003).

4.3 The United States as a republican form of rule Written constitutions were old and established practices by the time the thirteen colonies (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia) declared their independence from Great Britain. During the war most states rapidly revised their constitutions to accommodate wartime needs. Weeks before the Declaration of independence in 1776, the Articles of Confederation were drafted which outlined the ways in which the American states were to coexist. Soon after the victory in the War of Independence (1776–1783) a growing body of opinion began to see these articles as insufficient tools to manage political affairs between

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the states and, perhaps more pressing, their relations with systems in the environment. Deudney (2007: 176–79, 1995: 208–210), argues that out of the debates over the shape of the new federal constitution a “negarchic” form of rule was created. The United States as a negarchy was neither the traditional inter-state anarchy of international politics, nor the hierarchy within states. Indeed the new entity had to avoid both poles and it served to negate power. It was designed to counter the republican threats of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy as well as to avoid the external threats of war and coercion by foreign powers. The Philadelphian system, asserts Deudney, was an alternative to the state as well as to a European-style system of states. The Federalists as well as their various opponents feared centralization as much as they feared conflict between states and rebellion within them. Accordingly, the institutions of the new polity were designed to balance both threats. Although the federal government was given charge of the army, it was restrained in using it. The federal army was counterbalanced by the state militias which acted as balancers of the last resort (Deudney 1995: 203–204). This “negarchic states-union” persisted until the War of Southern Secession (1861–1865). The outcome of the war, according to Deudney, redefined the relationship between the parts and the whole by establishing the impossibility of secession and by the growth of the federal states and the expansion of the powers of the executive at the expense of the executive. As we saw in Chapter 2, the model of the Philadelphian system has been an important influence on the theoretical framework of this book. However, Duedney’s subsequent analysis of the empirical case deserves to be expanded upon. The republican interpretation, in many ways a confirmation of American exceptionalism, contrasts with an interpretation emphasizing the similarities between the USA of the eighteenth century and contemporary European states. The differences can be traced to disagreements over how the programme of the Federalists should be understood. This was the faction devoted to changing the Articles of Confederation into a tighter form of coexistence. Edling argues that the Federalists wanted to create a unitary state in America that would have the same kind of authority and capabilities as European states. They were, however, forced to compromise and rephrase their programme in order to make it palatable to the large sections of the American decision-makers who were deeply sceptical of an intrusive state and by the states themselves who were used to independence and self-government. The accomplishment of federalism, according to Edling, was to create a framework within which the creation of a strong national government

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could be reconciled with potent opposition to the state (Edling 2003: 220). The underlying principle of federalism was to limit the government of the whole to certain areas like defence, commercial regulations and foreign relations (Edling 2003: 223). The limitations of the federal government were about the extent of its purview, not the intensity of power within it. As long as the government could acquire a majority in Congress there were no serious obstacles to how much manpower and funds it could raise. As we will see below, these capabilities were indeed considerable. Furthermore, in key episodes during the nineteenth century Congress was not only unwilling, but in practice also incapable of restraining or stopping the executive power of going to war. It is evident that security was a central concern of the Federalists and of the other framers of the constitution. Equally clear is that republican political theory played a substantial role in forming the world-view and political thinking of eighteenth- century Americans (Sellers 1994). Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike analysed and discussed the security predicament of the United States in republican terms, warning of the threats of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy (Sellers 1994: 149–162). Federalists also rejected a confederation as a form of rule on grounds of security. However as the Anti-Federalists of the 1780s and the republicans of the 1800s argued, the curtailing of the states was done to a precariously extreme degree. The positive freedom of the states was restricted in order to forestall situations where they might threaten each other’s liberty. Importantly the capabilities of acting towards external systems were placed at the centre with the federal government. The liberty of the states was constructed as liberty in internal self-rule, not the freedom to conduct external policies. The result was not a unitary state, but neither was it analogous with the HRE and the EU. An explicit focus on how the authority and capabilities for organized violence were organized clarifies the question of whether the USA ever transcended the spectrum between state and system of state. It also clarifies the similarities and contrasts with the HRE and the EU. To do this an analytical language is required that does not reify the categories used elf- descriptively by the system under study. To structure that analysis the forms of rule framework provides assistance by distinguishing between four factors: 1) the nature of the members; 2) the relations of members to each other; 3) the relations of members to the centre; and 4) the relations of members and the polity as a whole to systems in the environment. Originally the members of the United States were the states. By the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 the thirteen colonies

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had long traditions of political existence. The distance from Britain had fostered both a sense of community and a considerable degree of governmental capacity and institutionalization. The proto-state character of the states is frequently stressed by writers working to emphasize the extraordinary fact of the American states coming together and the ceding of authority to the federal layer. This emphasis further underlines the comparison between the American states-system and the European one. It is, however, worth mentioning the differences between American and European states. First, the former had a history of community and commonalities that the latter lacked. Second, the American states were young by European standards. Although the first colonies date from the seventeenth century their age did not amount to several centuries of elite and attitude formation and construction of separate identities and images. Third, even though there was considerable exchange between European elites, most realms had already “locked in” the majority of their elites for centuries which gave them a vested interest in maintaining this closure. Federalism instituted another way of defining who was a member of the United States: not only the states but also the individual citizens were members. The Tenth Amendment is a notoriously ambiguous compromise between the states and the federal system. It states that the “powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved for the states, respectively, or to the people.” Advocates of states’ rights have claimed that “the people” refers to the citizens of the respective states, while advocates of a strong federal government have seen the amendment as referring to a single American citizenry. In the former interpretation, the people’s interest and wishes are mediated through state governments, in the latter the people are immediately under the federal government. This conflict of interpretation resembles conflicts between central government and intermediate bodies in Europe. The relations of the members to each other and to external systems Equally clear is the constitutional and institutional allocation of authority and capabilities. The Constitution restricts the relations of the states to each other as well as to systems in the environment, establishing that “no state may enter into a treaty, alliance or confederation” (US 1787a: Article I: 10). Only in exceptional cases may states levy customs and the revenues from such customs will be subject to the treasury of the United States. Regarding the use of the means of violence and more

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urgent forms of diplomacy, the states are not allowed to keep troops and vessels of war in peacetime, enter “into any agreement or compact with another [US] state, or with a foreign power, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” These are clear rules of the “thou shalt not” kind, effectively shutting the states off from political interaction with other systems in the environment (Pinder 1968). Interestingly both the confederate and Federal Constitutions were adamantly clear in sealing off the states from systems in the environment that in European politics were highly important to prestige, prosperity, protection and diplomacy, namely the networks of nobility and dynastic politics (US 1777/81: VI, US 1787a: VI). Section VI of the Articles of Confederation and of the Federal Constitution prohibited the US citizens from accepting and the states from granting titles of nobility. While this certainly had an ideological domestic appeal in a society with strong egalitarian tenets and yearnings for even stronger ones (see Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 256), this prescription had substantial ramifications for what we anachronistically call international politics. It insured America as a whole from foreign entanglements over which it could exercise little control and it further strengthened the trend to isolate the state layer from world politics. The states, the centre and war The well-known Second Amendment states that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed since a well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state (US 1787a: Amendment 2). But does it really amount to keeping the means of violence in the hands of the states, thus providing a counter-balance to the forces at the disposal of the Federal government? The President of the United States is the commander-in- chief over not only the army of the United States but also over the militias of the states, whenever these are called in to the service of the USA (US 1787a: II, 2). The system of parallel forces, militia and army, was thus connected by being placed under presidential authority. Hamilton also envisaged that the militia would be regulated by Congress but trained by the individual states (Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 208–212). The idea of dividing the forces of a realm into two or more separate bodies each under the control of distinct political bodies was common in Europe of the late Middle Ages/early modern period. In sixteenthcentury France, there was a strict division between the king’s army and the provincial forces. While the former were at the monarch’s disposal

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for foreign conquest and the defence of the realm, the latter could not be dispatched out of their home province and were only to be used for defensive actions (Hintze 1970b). The principle of several centres of government with their own armed forces was a cornerstone of dualism and the Ständestaat form of rule (Poggi 1978), although not of dualism in constitutional theory (Fleming 2001). Relying on a popular militia to provide military defence that would not threaten liberty in the same way as a standing army or mercenaries would is an old republican idea. Machiavelli repeatedly argued that an armed citizenry would be able to provide both public goods. Hamilton stated that the state militias would provide local defence while the national army would defend the frontier and all of the states (Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 208–211, Ostrom 2008:9 5). But we must ask ourselves in what ways this family resemblance makes the USA a dualist system of government, resembling Ständestaatarrangements, as argued by Hendrickson (2009: 133). Centralization of authority in the central government was substantial in relation to the militias. The federal government was allowed to use state militias to protect other states than their own as well as to put down insurrections, factions or seditions in other states (Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 212). A force that can be used constitutionally against other members by the centre is no robust safeguard of their liberty. Its function as a safeguard is more reminiscent of control systems that require two separate firing mechanisms to launch nuclear weapons than a safeguard of liberty defined as “frontiers of freedom which nobody should be permitted to cross” (Berlin 2002: 210). Thus the federal Army and state militias primarily differed with respect to areas of operation rather than with regard to command. To determine whether the militias, in an extreme case, could really defend the liberty of the states against federal forces, we have to consider capabilities. Hamilton argued that the army of the federal government could never threaten the liberties of the people if there is a citizen force “little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms” (Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 210). But would the militias really be able to equal federal forces according to the logic of the Federalists? The Federalist plan clearly distinguished between militia and army as forces of different character not just with regard to political command and control but with regard to capabilities. Since militiamen were essentially civilians with other occupations, it is difficult to see how they could be equal to professional soldiers who would also acquire combat experience at the frontier. Upon closer examination, Hamilton’s argument that the militia and army would be equally

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matched and balance each other seems like a way to assuage the fears of Anti-Federalists that the federal government would be paramount to the states in terms of military capability as well as political authority. Consequently, the USA amounted to a dualist system in principle, but not in practice. The setup caught the Anti-Federalists in a jam and they knew it. If they insisted that the militia should be improved in terms of training and equipment to equal the federal army, the population would be brought under even stricter control of the federal government, as in European countries whose militias were nothing but second-tier reserve forces. On the other hand, if they insisted that the people should not be submitted to frequent training, they weakened the militias (Edling 2003: 113–114). Either way, the militias could not serve as the extension of the states as sovereign powers (Edling 2003: 106–107). However, in several episodes during the wars of the nineteenth century state militias acted independently. In 1812 the governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut refused to send their militias beyond state borders to fight the British (Onuf and Sadovsky 2002: 210). Similarly in 1860, in the opening rounds of the Civil War, the militia of Pennsylvania disbanded after the ninety days for which they were drafted expired, even though it was on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run (Brogan 2001: 321). The nullification crisis of 1828–1833 provides an illustration of how the relationship between the centre and the states developed during the nineteenth century. It was one of the most serious crises between the states and the federal government prior to 1861. Ever since it took place, interpretations of the nullification crisis have diverged sharply over who was the winner (Hendrickson 2009: 133, 136). Placing the crisis in a comparative perspective demonstrates that the USA was certainly not a unitary state but rather a multitude of polities joined in one (Leibniz 1988 [1677]: 117) but that it differed significantly from the HRE and the EU. In 1828 Congress passed a new tariff that imposed heavy duties on British imports. The South feared it would provoke the British into counter-tariffs on cotton. South Carolina asserted her state sovereignty, declared the tariff null and refused to allow US customs officials to perform their duties within the state boundaries (Wilentz 2005: 374–389). President Jackson reacted by denouncing the refusal as treasonable and prepared to send federal troops to Charleston. In turn the governor of South Carolina mobilized the militia. The military showdown was averted by the last-minute introduction of a much reduced tariff (Brogan 2001: 295). The crisis demonstrates that states could and did oppose federal laws and that the US constitution was

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ambiguous with respect to where sovereignty resided. However, the president had a standing army and displayed considerable readiness to use it. Moreover a majority of representatives in Congress supported the Force Bill and thereby the authority of the president to coerce and even to send troops to enforce a recalcitrant state (Ellis 1987: 93–95, Wilentz 2005: 385–86). Confederal antecedents The restrictions on the rights of the states and the extension of their duties were not introduced wholesale by the Federalists in the 1780s over ardent protectors of “states’ rights.” The provisions found in the Confederate Constitution show that the relations of the states with each other and with systems in the environment were substantially restricted even before the debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists began. The Confederal Constitution of US 1771/1781 contained similar and in some cases even more explicit restrictions on the states’ relations with systems in the environment and with each other. Regarding the former, the Constitution stated that no state may, without the explicit consent of the United States in Congress, send or receive ambassadors or “enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any king, prince or state” (US 1777/81: VI). Regarding the latter, no “two or more states shall enter into any kind of treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue” (US 1777/81: VI). The states were not allowed to hold any land or naval forces in peacetime but had the duty to maintain well regulated militias for self-defence. The United States, “in congress assembled” held veto rights over these forces. The right to declare war and peace belonged to the Congress of states (US 1777/81: IX) and not to the states except for those cases when the USA was already at war (US 1777/81: VI) or in case a state was attacked by Indians or pirates. The states, once again in Congress, conferred the authority to go to war or enter into treaty with a foreign power to the central powers. A qualified majority of nine out of thirteen states was required for the United States to do so (US 1777: IX). In sum, although the central or concerted powers of the United States were restrained by the states, the states were themselves restrained but in an even more rigorous way. If external action was to take place at all, it would have to be joint action. It is not necessary for the present purposes to investigate how the federalist position could win despite the considerable opposition, but rather to interpret the results of this outcome. The fact that the states

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ceded powers that from a European point of view were the core of sovereignty, of statehood itself, to the federal level is instructive regarding the nature of the American republic. Firstly, the protests of the AntiFederalists against what they saw as the loss of core functions on the part of the states make federalism seem less like the ingenious solution reconciling different goals that the consensual tradition in American historiography makes it out to be (Cornell 1999). Secondly, the fact that the far-reaching restrictions on the powers of the states could be accepted attests to the strength of American community, of the loyalty of significant elites to the entire republic instead of towards their native states. During the War of Independence considerable segments of American society, including chief military elites, had begun to think of America in continental terms (Higginbotham 2005: 61, 68). The war had had important emotional and institutional effects that helped to create a change in perceptions. Thirdly, the fact that the states handed over their capabilities to conduct foreign policies and command armies to a common centre attests to the fact that, compared to the estates of the HRE, contemporary states in Europe or member states of the EU, the American states feared each other and the centre much less. Fourthly, the environment of the United States was unusually free from serious rivals compared to Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the environment of the HRE) and of the twentieth century (the environment of the EU) (Parish 1975). In sum, the establishment of the American state demonstrates that its internal and external security conditions were very different from that of our other cases. Hence the solution of federalism, which is repeatedly lauded as a solution to volatile and insecure countries and regions, relied in its most celebrated case on a relative absence of internal and external threats and on a highly developed sense of community, forged in a war of liberation. Barring these conditions, federalism may be tantamount to the same fears of relinquishing protection voiced by Anti-Federalists (Cornell 1999: 92, 161). Only patriotism, a substantial amount of systemic trust and, to borrow a term from EU studies, the “constructive ambiguity” (see Heisbourg 2000) of the constitution enabled their leap of faith. Federalism as a nesting system Does the argument pursued this far mean that federalism in the American case essentially amounted to a European-style unitary state, albeit cleverly masked by Madison, Hamilton and Jay? That would be a too simplistic conclusion which might force us to make a kind of false consciousness argument concerning the statesmen, thinkers and

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philosophers of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century America. The federal constitution was a document fraught with “serious ambiguity” over the relation between states and central powers (Hutchcroft 2009: 380, Bessette and Schmitt 2009). This ambiguity almost caused the polity to collapse in the 1790s and was the underlying cause of the frequency of constitutional crises during the first half of the nineteenth century (Hendrickson 2009: 129). The resolution of the crisis was constantly postponed until it erupted in the Civil War. Like Landeshoheit in the HRE, federalism was the institution with heaviest constitutive effect on the configuration of the USA. Vincent Ostrom interpreted federalism as a precursor of cybernetic arrangements (Elazar 2008:x, Scott 2003: 85–88). This closed systems interpretation only conceptualizes the politics of restraint on the federal level and has to be replaced by an interpretation that sees two parallel but nested systems. Madison argued that the United States is ruled by two governments (Madison, Hamilton and Jay (1987 [1788]: 321–22; Onuf and Onuf 1993: 54), an arrangement he called the “compound republic.” The main innovation of federalism was to create a separate political system, parallel to that of inter-state politics. The USA resembled a setup of two parallel systems of action, one inter-state system and one federal. We saw in the previous section that these two systems were kept distinct and were perceived as distinct by most Americans (Wood 2009) – if they had not seen the federal government as distinct and its tasks as epiphenomenal to political life it is doubtful whether they would have accepted this kind of transfer of power. The federal system overlaid (Buzan 1991: 219–221) the states of America and lessened their mutual fears and rivalries. This effect was similar to the “overlay” of the United States of traditional rivalries of the West European states after 1945, which the following chapter deals with. Crucially, all American elites had equal access to the federal system as a system of action parallel to the states. American elites could choose which one to act through, but the federal one offered more attractive career paths and greater possibilities of action since the range of political tasks that could be performed through the states-system became increasingly limited. The egalitarian quality of the federal system ensured that it became more attractive than acting through an individual state, resulting in the long-term overshadowing of the states-system of America. It also guaranteed a degree of impartiality that the centre of the HRE never had. It also lessened the importance of inter-state politics in many areas, most notably security and defence. A clear sign of the strength in the federal system was the rapid formation from the 1800s onwards of parties that competed for power

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(Wilentz 2005: 116–125). Certainly, American parties throughout history have been strong in different parts of the country. The fact remains that with the increasing strength of the federal layer states no longer competed with each other for influence over the Union; parties did. The country was divided over the decision to go to war in 1812 but the split occurred along party, not state lines, with Republicans voting for war and Democrats against (Pearlman 1999: 73, 76–79). Like all federal institutions, American parties, from the Federalists of the 1780s to the Republicans of the 1850s, were open to all eligible US citizens – a crucial difference compared to the formation of alliances in the HRE as well as in today’s EU which has no genuine European parties. Federalism as a system of politics nested the American system of states by regulating their relations to external systems. It thus created a very different configuration than in the HRE and the EU. It insulated the state layer of the polity from systems in the environment. Proscribing international relations of the individual states largely meant that the Union could not be divided by an external actor along state lines. The republic was balanced by not having to struggle and balance the effects of the foreign politics and foreign policy interests and ambitions of several dozens of states. Sealing off the states from world politics and from territorial expansion on the continent had profound effects, since it lessened competition and hence fears of oligarchy between them. The isolation of the state layer from relations with systems in the environment (except the federal) meant that the system could not be destabilized or corroded from the outside in the way that happened to the HRE. However, it also entailed that the dual system of the USA had to stabilize itself. No states could seek to address imbalances by seeking external support. The construction of federalism as a nesting system was possible because of a number of historically unique circumstances, some of which have been mentioned above. The absence of a history of conflict and conquest between the states of America was another facilitating factor. Because of this absence the feared anarchy scenario was hypothetical and did not draw on recent real experiences. The USA had fought its War of Independence as a whole and won as a whole. In contrast to the HRE after 1648 and Europe in 1945, the USA in the 1780s was not a fragmented polity in need of rebuilding and reconciliation. At the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 the HRE was a war-torn union with a substantial deficit of trust. The only solution to combine the demands of liberty and security for the imperial estates with a common polity was a compound republic with strong safeguards. As the next

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chapter demonstrates, the situation in Europe after the Second World War was analogous to that of the HRE in 1648. The task of crafting a common polity was even harder in the 1950s since the European states did not have a strong history of community and symbolic institutions that could help reconciliation. The introduction of the federal system parallel to the inter-state one caused a redefinition of what the liberty of the states amounted to. It was no longer freedom to conduct relations with external systems and actors but freedom to conduct affairs internal to the state. The episode of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions serves as an illustration of the precedence given to internal affairs of the states over external relations. As a reaction to the risk of war with France in 1798–1799, the federalist government issued the Alien and Sedition Acts which tightened naturalization legislation and enabled the government to brand any kind of criticism as criminal sedition (Onuf and Sadovsky 2002: 198–199). In response to this extension of the powers of the federal government, Jefferson and Madison drafted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions arguing that the Union was a compact of sovereign states. As a consequence, the states had the right to decide if an action by the federal government was constitutional or not. The question split the republic along state lines as all states north of Virginia signed acts supporting the Alien and Sedition Acts and arguing that the right of interpretation belonged to the federal courts (cited in Frohnen 2002: 403–407, Brogan 2001: 262). What Jefferson and Madison protested against on republican grounds as well as what they did not find objectionable offers important insights into the USA as a compound republic. Limitations of the states’ autonomy in internal issues were seen as threatening to their liberty while a centralization of authority and capabilities necessary to wage war and Western expansion were not problematic for the thinker who is strongly associated with “states’ rights” (McPherson 1988: 48). As we shall see below, Jefferson and Madison were strongly in favour of expansion of the United States and, occasionally, of foreign wars to further her interests. In the United States, it was more important to safeguard matters internal to the states than control over the means of violence or the right to make foreign policy. In the HRE and to some extent in the EU, the opposite was and is the case. This meant that the threat of tyranny was given another emphasis than in the HRE and EU: it was more to do with intervention in internal affairs than curtailing external relations. The nesting of the states-system in the federal system demonstrates how an institutional configuration changes the function of institutions

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like sovereignty. The American system gave them other rights and duties, both positive and negative, than the imperial did and the EU system does. These rights and duties are different than those of provinces in a hierarchically organized state as well as than those of fully sovereign states. The fact that states were sovereign both legally and in their own self-understanding created a number of tensions, between states and the federal layer and between sections. Control over the central authorities was also a subject of conflicts and controversies. These took the form of the binding and balancing between the legislative, judicial and executive organs of the federal system. Similar tensions and balances were also built into the political system of every state. Republican fears and instruments are found on both levels. Republicanism on a federal level The mutually restraining and egalitarian aspects of republicanism are found within each state and within the federal systems. The relation between the states and the federal level is, however, not characterized by a corresponding measure of mutual restraint and equality. No state can veto federal decisions and, given a Congressional majority and the consent of the Supreme Court, the federal government could override individual states. The lack of republican embedding and restraint is particularly clear regarding the issues this book focuses upon, security and international relations. Nevertheless the construction of the USA as a system of systems is a prominent inheritance from early modern republicanism, the idea that human society has to be – and is by nature – organized as a series of embedded and ascending corporations. In modern systems theory this corresponds to a set of nested systems. All three cases of this book share this ontology of politics, the basic construction. In the American version of this configuration a number of states existed, endowed with substantial rights regarding their liberty. A crucial distinguishing feature of the USA was that this liberty was defined as liberty in internal affairs, not freedom to conduct external relations.

4.4 The Empire of Liberty I began this chapter with a discussion of factors in the environment of the original thirteen states along the Atlantic seaboard that enabled the formation of the United States. Exceptional traits in these systems facilitated the establishment of the federal layer and the expansion of the

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USA, but they entailed challenges to the polity that threatened to tear it apart and eventually resulted in the most devastating war in American history. The chapter now turns to how the United States handled its environment and how these strategies threatened its survival. The absence of external protectors After the constitution was ratified and its political system began to set, the United States did not need an external protector in the sense of an outside power that could guarantee the constitution and its republican purposes of securing the liberty and security of the states. Republican security is Janus-faced, one aspect looking inwards for threats against liberty and security, the other spying outwards for external threats of division and attack. Did any European powers act as a protector of the young republic in this more directly military sense? Britain’s hegemonic status, underpinned by its naval supremacy, was an important factor in accounting for the relative absence of war between the Peace of Vienna in 1815 and the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853. Chief credit in this respect however goes to the Concert of Europe, which enabled active multilateral management of the European system (Holsti 1991). Hence it cannot be claimed that Britain acted as a protector in any direct sense. During the American War of Independence France provided substantial backing in the form of credit and troops (Dull 1985: 107–114, 152–158). It would be bordering on counterfactual speculation to ask whether continued French support would have meant that the USA might have retained the Articles of Confederation instead of adopting federalism. To make that case would be to ignore all the endogenous pressures for greater self-sufficiency that lay behind adoption of the Federalist programme and the cohesion created by the War of Independence. Consequently, France does not fit the bill for an external protector of material security or republican liberties. The difficulties of power projection in the form of shipping land forces across the Atlantic would have made it difficult for any European power to act as a protector of the individual states. The United States was thus left to its own devices, which both facilitated expansion, forestalled division and prevented the republic from being embroiled in foreign wars. The geographical and political isolation of the United States meant that it had to balance itself, something that proved difficult. Nineteenth- century warfare: imperial or republican? The westward expansion throughout the nineteenth century provides important clues to how the USA functioned as a compound republic.

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The United States fought several major wars prior to the Civil War: against Great Britain in 1812–1814, against Spain in Florida 1810–1814, against Mexico in 1846–1814 as well as numerous wars against Native American nations. None of these cases activated the strategic paradox. Three factors stand out in all the wars. They were wars of aggression, they were popular with elites as well as the broader majority of the citizenry and the opposition that existed could not stop the federal government from going to war. The nineteenth- century wars demonstrated that the USA had no structural problems in going to war but could amass considerable resources and win successes that place its politicalmilitary machinery at least equal to contemporary European states. Federalism provides in part an answer to why this was possible since it reduced the state level as a locus of political tension. None of the wars were hampered by time limits imposed by Congress or by restrictions in the kind of forces that could be used or the objective that could be pursued. In short, none of the institutionalized safeguards and limitations that we saw when the HRE went to war, even for defensive purposes, were present in America’s nineteenth- century wars. The war of 1812 During the Napoleonic Wars tensions between the USA and Britain increased over shipping, impressments and the unsettled Canadian border. In 1810 opinion in Congress, with Jefferson and Madison as notable supporters (Wood 2009: 659, 660–662, Wilentz 2005: 141–148, 153–159), began to shift in favour of war with Britain. The US declaration of war in 1812 opened a three-front war, at sea against Britain, in the south against the Creek Indians and Spain (Cusick 2003) and in Canada against Britain (Nugent, Walter 2008: 74). The war of 1812 is the only major episode in US history where we see traits resembling the “strategic paradox” of the compound republic and the difficulties of the HRE in acting internationally. American forces were a combination of federal army and state militias (Wood 2009: 672). A number of governors and militias protested against the invasion of Canada for reasons reminiscent of the republican threat of tyranny and concern for the liberty of the states. When the USA invaded Canada, most of the state militias refused to cross the border, arguing that their task was not to operate outside the USA (Pearlman 1999: 81–82). The Federalist Party, which opposed the war, were hoping for a British victory (Wilentz 2005: 159–168). In the Hartford Convention of 1814 it debated how the Union could be reorganized after an American defeat to represent republican principles and state sovereignty (Pearlman 1999: 85–86). The governors

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of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island even argued that Virginia, who dominated the republican army and presidency, might subject all states to a despotic rule if the war was won (Pearlman 1999: 78 Wood 2009: 694). New England politicians also began talking openly of secession in protest against the war and against the expected unbalancing of the Union by the inclusion of more states to the west (Brogan 2001: 254–255, Hendrickson 2009: 54–66). The Hartford Convention is of interest since New England Federalists, the original supporters of a strong federal government, were behind it. It demonstrates that secession, the ultimate exit option from the republic, cut across party and sectional lines, in turn entailing that the inter-state layer was still in effect potentially in opposition to the federal level. When the British launched a counter-invasion of America it changed the political and military scenes. Militarily, it mobilized patriotic sentiment and the militias began to fight back. Politically, the British invasion, the American victory in the battle of New Orleans and the favourable peace thoroughly discredited the Federalists and their programme (Pearlman 1999: 88, Wood 2009: 312–314, 696, Wilentz 2005: 175–178). The political outcome of the war meant that the possibility that the USA could develop into a form more resembling the HRE and the EU, with greater liberty and authority to the states, was closed. The way the system handled these protests reveals what kind of republic the USA was. Instead of paralyzing the republic, these expressions of inter-state republicanism were outflanked by the federal layer. Even though state militias acted independently of the federal government, the US navy and the limited federal army did not (Pearlman 1999: 84). As a response to the difficulties of going to war with the militias, the federal army was strengthened in ways allowed by the constitution, and the militia was left at home in the next war, against Mexico 1846 (Pearlman 1999: 89). Western expansion Western expansion was the product of planned patterns of incursion into the faltering Spanish Empire, often in conflict with international law (Nugent, Walter 2008: 111, 129). The strategy was to use private initiatives and freebooters as far as possible to change demographics and inspire a local uprising, recognize local rule and then annex the area to the USA. This pattern was repeated against the Spanish and Mexicans from the infiltration of East Florida in 1813 (Cusick 2003: 66–77) and the infiltration of Texas in the 1830s (Nugent, Walter 2008: 130–134) to the annexation of California and New Mexico in 1848 (McPherson 1988: 49). Expansion into the territories of Native American nations

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displayed similar traits. In case after case, the executive could use its control over the armed forces in a way that presented Congress with a fait accompli and forced it to acquiesce (Hendrickson 2009: 177). Instruments of restraint operated between different central institutions; the restraint of Congress was directed against the powers of the president. This structural setup differed sharply from conditions in the HRE and the EU, where instruments of restraint operate between the members. Furthermore, during the period in question, the instruments of restraint were not particularly effective in practice. Expanding the Union – creating new states Expansion of the Union affected the relations among the states and between states and the federal level profoundly. The United States first expanded into the areas west of the Appalachians and beyond the Ohio River. Several of the original thirteen states had extensive territorial claims, the size of several current US states, beyond the Appalachians. Realization of these claims would have exacerbated differences in size and power between the states, which were already substantial. Land claims could also lead to conflicts between the states. The problem was solved through the North-West Ordinance of 1787 which turned all claims beyond the current state borders into federal land (US 1787b: 227, Deudney 1995). The geographical extent of the states was thereby fixed; no state could expand its borders. Instead, new states were to be created out of the territories once they had reached a sufficient population. In combination with federalism, the North-West Ordinance meant that states became self- enclosed. Politics concerning other parts of America had to be mediated through the federal layer and thus involved the polity as a whole. The North-West Ordinance created a US public domain that included territories belonging to the USA but not yet part of its political system as full members. Transforming state- claimed land into federal was another invention unknown – and probably impossible – to comparable entities like the HRE and the EU. Not only did it remove an issue of contention between the states, it also strengthened the construction of the United States as a body politic separate from the states. The fact that the states voluntarily gave up land claims demonstrated the considerable trust between the states and, correspondingly, their limited fears of each other. In contrast to European countries, there were no structural impediments to their doing so. Most coronation oaths in European history commited the monarch-to-be to defend the royal domains and not relinquish any part of them to foreigners. A realm was considered a lease from God and thus inviolate. This is the

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reason why so few kingdoms were extinguished in European history until the partitions of Poland (Osiander 2007: 371–378). There were thus strong cultural norms against voluntarily giving away territory, regardless of whether the monarch only had a claim to it or could actually point to effective occupation (uti possedis). No trust-building measures or changes in threat perceptions could alter the ban against giving away parts of the royal domain as long as this conception persisted. The fourth article of the North-West Ordinance proclaimed the inviolability of the territory of the United States by proscribing secession by any future states since they belonged to the United States of America in perpetuity (US 1787b: IV). Rivalry over the future of the new territory was not prevented, only rivalry in the sense of acquiring territory. Even though individual states could not expand, each new state that entered into the Union enlarged one of the two major sectors that had begun to coalesce, the slave-holding South or the “free soil” North (Brogan 2001: 264). Western expansion was controversial throughout the century. One strand, from the Federalists to Daniel Webster in 1848, argued that expansion would unbalance the Union (Hendrickson 2009: 175). The other, represented by Madison and Jefferson as well as other representatives from the southern and western states, argued that expansion would in fact balance the Union. Madison had argued that the way to counter the divisive influence of factions was to expand the Union and increase the number of factions in order to hinder combinations of factions from imposing their will on minorities (Ryan 2000: 3, Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 122–128). It is noteworthy that the representatives of southern states, in other issues staunch supporters of states’ rights, had no objections to foreign wars fought by the federal government or to the incorporation of new states, provided that slavery was not proscribed (Hendrickson 2009: 175). In the American republic there was no tension between ardent support for the liberty of the states and external expansion, even war, although it meant giving these powers to the central government. The Mexican war The war against Mexico in 1846–1848 was the largest of the wars before the Civil War. The USA proved itself capable of large-scale mobilization in an offensive war as nearly 90,000 troops fought in the war (Nugent, Walter 2008: 204). In theory the powers of the president to go to war were restrained by Congress; in practice the executive could

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lead the country into a war by moving troops into harm’s way. When the provocation led to fighting, Congress was presented with a fait accompli and forced to declare war (Nugent, Walter 2008: 199–200, Pearlman 1999: 93, Hendrickson 2009: 177–178, Howe 2007: 790– 791). The war ended in a complete US victory as Mexico ceded the current states Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado (Pearlman 1999: 107). Public and political opinion on the war was divided: while hugely popular with large segments of the population, the way it had been started drew criticism in the House of Representatives. Although the resolution proposed by the fiercely critical young congressman Abraham Lincoln was tabled, the House sponsored another calling the war “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President” (McPherson 1988: 46). The most outspoken critics of the Mexican war were politicians of an older generation who saw the war as immoral and conquest as potentially lethal to the stability of the Union. The objections of Adams, Clay and Webster recalled republican threats. They feared that the republic would be cast into anarchy in the form of disunion, eventually secession and future wars (Hendrickson 2009: 174). Opposition to the war and the expansion of presidential powers (Hendrickson 2009: 177–178) seems to form a parallel to the opposition of the princes of the HRE to the coups d’état of the armed estates against the constitution of the HRE and of the ways the Habsburgs hijacked international peace negotiations for their own interests. The American anti-war agitation was reminiscent of the language used in the constitutional debates of the 1780s. However, an important contrast to internal polemics over external war in the 1810s is that in the 1840s this critique was not formulated between states, but on the federal level. Political opinion was divided along party lines, with Democrats in favour of the war and of expansion in general while Whigs were opposed. Sectionalism was not absent since the parties were strongly based in different parts of the country that were growing increasingly distinct in cultural, economic and political terms (McPherson 1988: 6–46). The subject of the debates, the expansion of the USA, was also increasingly linked to the balance between sections. However, the terms of the debate reveal a less fragmented polity. It was conducted by people who represented the United States as a whole and it concerned different visions of the entire polity. Few princes of the HRE had the possibility of doing what Adams, Clay, Webster and Lincoln or their antagonists Polk or Taylor did – speaking as representatives not of

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their respective parts, but as representatives of the whole. It is doubtful whether any European statesmen of today would be in a structural position to do so in a time of profound crisis involving constitutional matters and external warfare. Hence the episode demonstrates an important contrast between the three republics: in America the notion of the whole as an entity, a body politic independent of the parts, was far stronger. The Civil War: republican epilogue, not apogee What does the American Civil War tell us about the USA as a compound republic? The exceptionalist republican interpretation of the United States argues that the Civil War changed the Union by definitely establishing the impossibility of secession and substantially expanding the federal state (Deudney 2007: 175). After the war, the purview of the state expanded and changed America. Hendrickson (2009: 221) argues that the war revealed the true nature of the USA as a “raging state system disguised by the forms of a constitution.” The opposite position, which stresses that the USA was more similar to contemporary European states, also claims that the war revealed the true form of the Union. Edling (2003: 229) argues that the Civil War demonstrated that the founders had created a national state well adapted to mobilization. Indeed the war proved that the framework of the constitution allowed for a mobilization of resources and their use on an unprecedented scale. I have argued above that the compound republic traits of the USA (in the theoretical sense used in this book) remaining after federalism receded after the war of 1812. Even though the conduct and the consequences of the Civil War changed the character of American life and the American state, the basic formula regarding the liberty of the states had been set several decades previously. The causes and political course of the Civil War evoke in some measure republican themes: the liberty of the states from the centre, the freedom to determine their own laws and to secede from the Union. Crucially it was the fear of infringement over slavery, a matter internal to each state (albeit with inter-state ramifications as seen in debates on jurisdiction over fugitive slaves) that sparked the Civil War, not threats to the liberty of the members in external relations. An analysis of the ways in which secession, the constitution of the Confederate States of America and the war aims of the Confederacy differed from republican theory tempers a republican interpretation of the Civil War. Regarding the Union side, its warfare, organization and

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war aims differed ever further from the ideal type of the compound republic. Although the states of the South seceded from the Union one by one after decisions taken in their own representative bodies, they immediately joined in a new polity. If we look beyond the discourse of liberty and states’ rights and analyse the institutions of the Confederacy we see that the differences between the Confederacy of the South and the Union of the North were marginal, except of course with regard to slavery. The President of the Confederacy would still be commander-in- chief of the army and navy of the Confederacy and of the state militias (CSA 1861 Art II: 2). Like the Union, it would have had a Supreme Court (CSA 1861 III: 2). The states would still have been prohibited from conducting their own foreign relations, security politics, or levy impost, duties on exports without the consent of Congress (CSA 1861 Article II: 20: 10). The aim of the statesmen of the Confederacy was not to create a polity qualitatively different from the one they left. Fearing that they would become a minority in a Union with more free states than slave states, they sought to create a new polity of their own with majority rule more favourable to the interests of the slave- owning elites (Parish 1975). Southern elites dreamt about creating an empire in the Caribbean (McPherson 1988: 103–110). Consequently, we would have had the same dynamics in place within the Confederacy as in the old Union. Naturally, had secession been successful, dynamics on the North American continent would have been radically different. The Union was not a gathering of disparate states but a highly organized polity. Far from suffering from any strategic paradox or paralysis, the federal Union mobilized forces of immense proportions and conducted war like any other unitary state (see Perlman 1999: 121). Naturally, the victory of the Union strengthened the centre at the expense of the states but the compound republic traits of the eighteenth century were long gone on both sides. Viewed retrospectively, this issue would appear to have already been settled in principle in the constitution of 1787. As noted above, the Constitution treated the issue of the members’ relation to the centre with great ambiguity which produced the repeated crises, and ultimately war, during the nineteenth century (Hendrickson 2009: 217). In the Federalist Paper number XIX, Madison wrote a rather wellinformed analysis of the Holy Roman Empire. His purpose was to illustrate the weaknesses of the Empire and of other confederations in order to achieve support for a government that controlled foreign policy and was capable of deciding matters of war and peace. Although reciting the by now familiar misinterpretation that the imperial

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estates were sovereign (Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987[1788]: 165– 166), Madison made a prophetic point: the USA would become very different from the HRE. This chapter has pursued the very same argument. Now we will turn to an analysis of the European Union and demonstrate its similarities with the HRE and its differences compared to the USA with respect to action in world politics and the conditions of its viability.

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5 A Shielded Republic: The European Union 1957–2010

5.1 Great expectations: the European Union as a compound republic For most of its history the European Union has been identified with peace and presented itself in the character of a civilian power. Its main activities have been peaceful ones, such as trade, industry, finance, labour markets (after 1992) social policy, the environment and the promotion of democracy. The introduction of a foreign and security policy in 1992 and a security and defence policy later in the decade were controversial and seen as alien additions to the European project. While the EU as a security actor is new, it has always been a security system. However, it has been unusual to identify the EU as a form of rule for which security has always been central (Sangiovanni and Verdier 2005). Part of the problem is conceptual. Modern political science has coded security and defence as the remit of the unitary state. Since the EU does not resemble such an entity, how could it be concerned with security? The institutional distinctness between the EU and the unitary state has been fused with the state-centred narrative of formation of order in European history reviewed in Chapter 2. For example, Marks (1997) claims that “[s] tates were created in war, the European Union in peace.” Nothing could be more wrong. The EU was created out of the experiences of the Second World War to provide security from threats between the member states (EU/EEC 1951). It is another kind of solution to the problems of security than the unitary state and the statessystem. Rather than dissolving the member states its driving force has been their preservation against stagnation and internal and external security threats (Milward 1992: 320–333, 337). More precisely its primary political purpose is to safeguard the liberty and security of the 119

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member states. The continuity in seeing the purpose of the EU as securing peace in Europe was evident in the motivation given by the German Constitutional Court for the constitutionality of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 (Bundesverfassungsgericht 2009: 2b). Although the international context has changed significantly from the 1940s to 2010 with regard to capabilities, constellations and institutions there is a basic continuity in European politics with strong republican traits. The emerging EU is very different from the European Communities of the 1950s. Yet certain features endure: the logic of economic integration; French fear of falling behind; general concern about German predominance; the potential for Franco- German leadership; British scepticism; and the small country syndrome (small member states’ fear of hegemony) (Dinan 2004: 8–9). The republican catalogue of threats has constituted and continues to constitute the driving force of and the limits to the construction of the EU. First, in the EU tyranny corresponds to a centralization of power to the common centre that would render the member states powerless or redundant. This was not one of the original threats but has gradually grown due to the creation of a structure to counter hegemony and anarchy. Second, the original and most important threat at the beginning of the integration process was a resurgent, non-restrained and possibly revanchist Germany. Sufficiently threatening on its own, in the worst case scenario a Germany with unrestrained autonomy and in possession of an independent industry and armaments capacity would necessitate counter-measures by the other great powers. Within the framework of international relations that preceded World War II the only effective counter-measure to unipolar German hegemony would be multipolar hegemony (Wæver 2000: 260, 266ff, Gilbert, Mark 2003: 106). This threat was latent during the entire post-war era and resurfaced with Germany’s impending unification in 1990. The resurging threat of oligarchy was (although not expressed in those terms) a major force behind the momentum of the integration process between 1990 and 1992. During the 1990s, the threat of a multipolar oligarchy within the EU has been articulated as misgivings not of adversarial “spheres of interest” but of informal directorates, conferences or agreements between the largest members. The EU has not only been created to avoid resurgent great power rivalry but also to safeguard the liberty and security of its smaller members, threats to which may be generated internally as well as externally to the Union. Although the “German question” has been the most pressing one, the EU system has solved other potential questions of hegemonic

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aspirations in Europe similar to the French of the seventeenth century and the Spanish of the sixteenth. Third, internal anarchy is feared as a repetition of the devastating world wars of the twentieth century. Whereas the foundational moment, and subsequently myth, of the American republic was liberation from foreign domination, the corresponding moment and myth of the EU republic is emancipation from the war-ridden past. The history of conflict shared by the member states of the European Union is more intense than the two other cases covered in this book, encompassing the wars of the nineteenth century and World War One as well as World War Two. Consequently, the fears of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy are far stronger than in the early United States and in the HRE. In contrast to the HRE, for whom the Thirty Years’ War was a comparable experience, the EU lacks the substantial history of unity and loyalty and the time-honoured institutions producing legitimacy and trust. Hence the safeguards of the EU are far stronger, with a greater emphasis on rights than duties, on liberty versus joint capacity. Like all forms of rule, the EU faces general threats to its viability. First, external pressures are a special case within the EU since its members have not used the Union to counter or deter the threat of territorial aggression; instead the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was designed for this purpose. Although modalities for foreign policy coordination were created in the 1970s, external pressures have been designated as tasks for the EU only in the 1990s. They will be dealt with in full below. The instances covered are diplomatic relations with third parties, managing the Union’s environment in the form of enlargement, economy/finance and security issues. In the last category we find phenomena such as organized crime, terrorism, refugees and above all instability and erosion of political structures abroad. A second kind of external pressure that has gained ground in the threat perception of the EU is economic, understood both as international economic competition and as globalization. Common to the perception of security (or military) and economic threats is that they can only be countered in concert or centrally through the EU system. This benefits small and middle-sized states unable to face external pressures on their own (Katzenstein 1997b: 259). Second, losses of legitimacy in the EU can result from three different sources, depending on the priorities of the members: ●

The inability of the Union to strengthen the economy, welfare and efficiency of its members.

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122 Stability without Statehood ●

●

An inability to live up to its core values of democracy, human rights, rule of law and security. This inability takes the form of the “democratic deficit” of the EU (Bellamy and Castiglione 2000) as well as of democratic flaws in the member states. An inability to prevent violations of human rights and democratic norms outside the Union is also damaging. Foreign policy paralysis and the inability to enforce decisions or common policies.

Third, non-legitimate exits which may consist in the members acting in their own name (either individually or in concert with other states), in conflict with the interests and values of the Union. Acting in one’s own name is legal as a right which is central to the liberty of the member states. However, there is considerable room for conflicts over the legitimacy of certain actions, especially in relation to whether they were undertaken with or without previous consultation and communication with other member states. Under current conditions when the intensity and frequency of warfare in Europe is at a historical low, losses of legitimacy and non-legitimate exits are the worst threats to the viability of the EU. Institutions The central institutions of the EU are: EU law including the treaties, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Commission, the European Council and the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament the European Monetary Union and the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) framework. The European Parliament and the Commission are central institutions of the EU I have chosen not to include them below, primarily since they lack powers in the fields of foreign and security policy and cannot coerce the Council of Ministers or the European Council in this regard (Nugent, Neil 2003: 210–211). The legal framework The member states of the EU are embedded in a common framework of EU law, ranging from the constitutional treaties of the Union to the myriad of everyday legislation and regulations. EU law increases mutual dependence of the member states and restrains their freedom of action. The position of EU law to national law is disputed. On the one hand, unlike the states of the USA after 1865, the member states of the EU are free to secede from the Union (EU 2008b article 50). In this vein, the German constitutional court ruled that the Lisbon Treaty is compatible

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with the German constitution but, crucially, that the constitution does not allow a transfer of “Kompetenz-Kompetenz” (Bundesverfassungsgericht 2009: 2d). This means that the states, in this case Germany, retain the capacity to decide their own remit. However, the two doctrines “direct effect” and “supremacy” establish the supremacy of EU law over that of the member states. “Direct effect” means that individual citizens of the member states “have rights under EU law that must be upheld by national courts” making EU law the “law of the land in the EU member states” (Hix 1999: 108). The possibility of individuals taking member states to court to try cases under the EU law finds its parallels in the relation between US citizens, the states and the Bill of Rights and between subjects, estates and the Aulic Council and Cameral Court of the Holy Roman Empire. “Supremacy” means that EU law, defined as all EU norms, is superior to member state law (Nugent, Neil 2003: 245). EU norms may be “an article of the EU treaties, a secondary act of the EU institutions ... and even a ‘general principle of EU law’ as defined by the ECJ” (Hix 1999: 110). In external trade and enlargement the EU as a whole has been given the competence to act through the central institutions in the name of all member states (Nugent, Neil 2003: 407–414). According to EU, the EU is sovereign over the member states in treaties with third parties, whether states or association of states (Wind 2000: 113, 121). It has also established the right of the Commission to negotiate agreement within the fields of common commercial policy and association agreements (Hix 1999: 111–112) which limits the possibility of individual members exercising diplomatic relations and to some extent hinders individual member states from establishing networks of clients among non-members. The Council of Ministers and the European Council The Council of Ministers and the European Council resemble parliaments whose members are the member states of the Union. In the former, minsters from all member states meet with their counterparts in nine different policy formations (Nugent, Neil 2003: 153; Bomberg, Peterson and Stubb 2008: 51). The most important of these is the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAEC). Decision-making procedures in the Council of Ministers and in the European Council have republican features. Decisions are taken either by unanimous, qualified majority or simple majority vote (Nugent, Neil 2003: 168–174). Decisions by unanimity, effectively granting each member a veto, are used mostly in connection with the CFSP and Police and Justice Cooperation,

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protecting the liberty of the members. Veto rights are analogous to the rights of resistance that were essential to the Ständestaat form of rule (Hintze 1970a: 123). Hence, in this very important respect the EU is similar to the Ständestaat form of rule dealt with in Chapter 1. The estates of the HRE did not possess veto rights, although they had extensive protection by Landeshoheit, and consequently the position of the member states of the EU vis-à-vis each other as well as vis-à-vis central institutions is stronger. It is also worth recalling that the states of the United States lacked veto rights. The EU member states have different numbers of votes according to the size of their populations. Qualified majority means the backing of votes amounting to 62 per cent of the EU’s population and the support of at least half of member states, regardless of size (Bomberg, Peterson and Stubb 2008: 53). The structures of the Council have an undemocratic character because they do not allow majority rule, however these undemocratic traits reflect a concern with republican protection of the liberty of the members. An example is the weighting of votes in the Council. Until 2005, 26 votes were a blocking minority which meant the five larger states could not outvote the seven smaller ones (Nugent, Neil 2003: 168). The weighting of votes resembles the division of the Imperial Diet into three colleges and the provision that one college could not be overruled by the other two. The possibility of small states blocking decisions by joining together as well as the unanimity requirement are analogous to the division of the Imperial Diet into Catholic and Protestant bodies, which meant that issues had to be resolved by an “amicable compromise.” The main point is that in the major representative institution where the members of the republics meet there are important safeguards for their liberty as well as standardized practices directed against the possibility of multipolar oligarchy. Although qualified majority can be used, the Council of Ministers often strives for consensus, votes are rarely forced and voting sessions are closed (Bomberg, Peterson and Stubb 2008: 53). Although states could force their peers to take or refrain from certain actions, there are strong norms and practices preventing them from infringing the liberty of the minority. The influence of norms protecting the liberty of the members is particularly strong in connection with the CFSP. Smith has identified three explicit norms of the CFSP: confidentiality, consensus and consultation. Two explicit norms are prohibition against hard bargaining and domaines reservées, the convention that certain policy areas are too sensitive to include in the integration project (Smith,

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Michael 2004: 122–124). For a long time they included unilateral problems between member states, crises with military consequences affecting one or several members and bilateral “special relationships.” The heads of state and government congregate in the European Council. It was created in 1974 to strengthen the Community by involving the highest authority of the member states (Nugent, Neil 2003: 178),its original role giving strategic direction to the integration and community process and not, as it would increasingly be doing, involving itself in policy development. Its main functions are building understanding and confidence; identifying medium- and long-term goals; initiating policy; a certain amount of coordination of EU policy goals; decision-making on issues that are deferred from the Council of Ministers; and finally it has a vital role in enlargement and CFSP matters (Nugent, Neil 2003: 193, 181). The European Council was not an official organ of the EU until the Lisbon Treaty and thus is not subject to the ECJ (Nugent, Neil 2003: 181). The growing role of the European Council should be understood as member states attaching more, not less importance to the EU. In turn this expresses a desire to ward off the threat of growing centralization. The fact that it has been given a key position on the CFSP shows that member states are desirous of conducting more of their foreign relations, not less, through the EU system. The Lisbon Treaty strengthened the European Council further by tasking it with formulating the strategic interests of the Union (EU 2008b Article 22 p.31). Its increasing importance and independence has been interpreted as increasing “intergovernmentalism” within the EU (Nugent, Neil 2003: 194–195). Intergovernmentalism is often understood in opposition to “supranationalism” (alternatively “federalism”) and the two concepts are seen as opposed in a dialectic relationship where the former means less integration and the latter more. Such interpretations are parallel to analyses of the Holy Roman Empire in terms of “the sovereignty of the estates” versus the “sovereignty of the Emperor,” concepts that are – due to the indivisible nature of sovereignty – diametrically opposed to one another. Chapter 3 showed that this is an oversimplification and misrepresentation of the tension that lay at the heart of the Empire. Likewise, supranationalism (more sovereignty to the ECJ and the Commission) and intergovernmentalism (more sovereignty to the member states) is a misinterpretation grounded in a conception of indivisible sovereignty. Intergovernmentalism is not a return to sovereign and inter-sovereign relations as the concept is understood in the international system but a joint exercise of member (state) authority. The increased amount of

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regular contacts enables members to view their interests increasingly in relation to the other members and also define them in concert (which of course does not eliminate the potential of conflict). Some scholars argue that member states define their interests in interaction with other member states but argue or presuppose that they arrive at the interaction as preconstituted entities. However, one of the key points of the EU – in particular in relation to the European Council – is that member state identities and interests are formulated within an EU system (Wæver 2000: 267). These features are probably the most strongly restraining ones. The autonomy of the individual member is restrained in two important respects, firstly through the recurrence of meetings which make it “answerable” to its peers and secondly, as I noted above, it restrains individual liberty by defining each individual in a collective context. In relation to autonomous agency, more subtle and yet more dramatic effects are brought about by the European Council. When they act in concert the capacity of the members for action is greatly increased. The Council is relatively free to decide its own sphere of competence vis-àvis other EU institutions and – it should be recalled – as a body vis-à-vis the domestic parliaments (Nugent, Neil 2003: 189). Hence the European Council restrains, and at meetings to a certain extent dissolves, the agency of individual members but at the same time it strengthens their collective agency. Economic embeddedness, protection and restraint The economic embeddedness of the EU system protects the member states against the threats of anarchy, oligarchy and external pressures. However, it is double- edged in relation to stability since it evokes threats of centralization. After World War Two, a sound European economy was identified as a crucial factor for stability. It was necessary in order to forestall crises that would lead to fascism or communism in individual states and conflicts between them and in order for the continent to weather the threat of the Cold War. The post-war crisis was quickly stabilized by the Marshall Plan, and shortly thereafter economic integration was established as the tool to tie the states together and to increase their collective strength. The European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 was a necessary building block because of the reliance of the armaments industry on these two commodities. The next step, taken with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, was an economic community. Attempts to form an Economic Monetary Union (EMU) began in 1969 and were brought to fruition in 1999 after long periods of stagnation

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and, eventually, preparation. The EMU, administered by the European Central Bank (ECB), both restrains the members and strengthens the EU against external pressures. By fixing exchange rates, adopting a common currency and establishing an independent Central Bank (Hix 1999: 283) the EU has created a far-reaching bond between its members. Although member states have the right to secede (EU 2008b Art 50), doing so is more difficult and more costly with the EMU in place. Two motives have driven the attempts to create a monetary union: embedding German economic strength and guaranteeing its allegiance to the EC/EU, and protection against external pressures (Sandholtz 1993). Embedding Germany was an especially strong motive in France both under Pompidou in 1969 and under Mitterrand in 1990. The European Monetary System (EMS) was structured and established by primarily France and Germany in 1979. It was driven partly by French uneasiness about the German economic resurgence and the stronger value of the deutschmark in comparison with the franc, and partly by misgivings about the capacity of France and Germany to handle external economic pressures (Dinan 2004: 173–174). The EMU was a central condition for French acceptance of German reunification in 1990. In the conventional history of the EU, the precise “deal” was that France gained EMU at the expense of the deutschmark in exchange for accepting reunification (cf. Dinan 1999: 138). The threat of German preponderance was the driving force behind the creation of a central institution (the EMU-ECB), that would restrain the liberty of the greatest member as well as everyone else’s. Thus it may be understood as a clear example of a republican security arrangement. As such it fits into a political narrative of a united EU whose members are tied together with the aim of avoiding the threat of anarchy in the form of recurring Franco- German conflicts (Dyson 2002: 23, 33). Explaining the EMU in terms of security reasons has been criticized by Risse and associates (1999: 152) who argue that binding would be better accomplished by balance of power strategies and it is unclear why Germany would agree to binding itself. These arguments are enigmatic since a balance of power strategy would be more economically costly and involve greater risks. It is also difficult to see how an adversarial balance of power against Germany could be combined with the alliance against the Soviet Union. As for Germany’s interests, rehabilitation and reconciliation have been cornerstones of the country’s post-1945 policy. Economic integration supports both security institutions and a European identity (Katzenstein 1997a).

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The EMU was all along a way of responding to external pressures. EMU and its predecessors EMS and ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) were ways to balance American financial influence and the effects of American financial and economic dominance (Hix 1999: 281). The EMU is also intended to stabilize European capital markets in the face of global financial unrest, a purpose that seemed to gain urgency during the 1990s through the global deregulation of capital markets (Dyson 2002: 23) and during the financial crisis of 2008–2010. It is also a way of galvanizing the EU as an economic zone which will enable its members to successfully meet competition from external economic actors. In an age where economics is dominated by finance and not by industry as in the 1950s (Cerny 1995), EMU brings the institutions of mutual binding and restraint up to date. EMU may be said to have constitutive as well as causal effects that reach beyond the financial sphere by creating a European financial sphere in which the identity of the member states become Europeanized (Dyson 2002: 18). Despite these embedding and stabilizing features the EMU and economic integration are also sources of tension. Firstly between member states and the centre since the concerns of the central institution, the ECB, often oppose member states’ interests. This conflict may be politicized as an infringement of the liberty of the members by the centre. Indeed, in the countries that have chosen to remain outside the euro zone, the final stage of the EMU and thus of Ecofin (Denmark, Sweden and the UK) resistance to the EMU has been presented as protection of a crucial aspect of their liberty. It may also be a source of conflict secondly, between member states over issues such as the stability pact and thirdly, within member states (Dyson 2002: 29). The EU offers protection against economic as well as military and political oligarchy, firstly by embedding the economies of the members within each other; secondly by creating institutions through which power over the economic sphere is either exercised jointly (Council of Ministers) or by central institutions with agentic properties (the Commission and the ECB); and thirdly by institutions such as the aquis communautaire and the common legal framework which in principle reduce the capacity of members to wage trade wars against each other. This is strengthened by the emphasis on business regulation that combats discrimination on the basis of national origin. During the financial crisis of 2008–2010 several member states, of which Greece was the most acute case, were helped by other member states. Since EU rules disallow bailouts from the ECB, several of the larger member states, including France and Germany, decided on a bilateral aid programme. The action

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circumvented formal institutions but was nevertheless conducted in an EU framework. Fourthly, the structural funds and the common agricultural policy (CAP) provide a certain amount of wealth distribution. All these measures protect the members against the economic hegemony that could be exercised in a less regulated economic system. The configuration of the members through complex sovereignty Central to the republican conception of security is that members of the republic retain the authority over and capabilities for organized violence. The EU member states’ formal possession of these traits creates another dynamic than in the early United States and the Holy Roman Empire. Both the USA and the HRE formally restrained the authority and capacity of the member states to act externally. The tension between liberty and autonomous action is expressed in the EU as a tension between the sovereignty of the member states and the extent and strength of the restraining institutions. Chapter 3 dealt with the institution of sovereignty during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but when we return to the function of the concept in the EU system, its meaning and function have been considerably changed due to the configuration in which it is situated. During the early modern period sovereignty, as it was formulated within the European system of states, was a solution to as well as a producer of a situation in which a plurality of polities had very limited ties and few duties to each other. Within the embedding framework of the EU system the concept has undergone a change and received the character of formulating and defending the liberty of the member states vis-à-vis each other as well as vis-à-vis the common centre. In conceptual history, the meaning of a concept is given first in a field in which it exists together with other concepts (Koselleck 1990:xx-xxii). Thus sovereignty receives a different meaning in a field where it co- exists with concepts such as integration and the republican catalogue of threats as compared to the early modern field where it coexisted with raison d’état and the institutions of balance of power. Formulating and guarding the liberty of the members’ sovereignty in the EU system is analogous to that of Landeshoheit in the imperial system. The function of sovereignty within the EU is ambivalent just like Landeshoheit; on the one hand it is a restraining institution vis-à-vis the centre and the member states, whereas on the other it is a factor that the other institutions of the system restrain. This dual position combines what Luhmann (1990: 169) considers the central aspect of modern constitutions: “a paradoxical institution, combining within one legal

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instrument the unlimited and the limited.” Certainly, there are also large differences between the two concepts. Even if Landeshoheit after 1648 no longer had the medieval status of a revocable right granted by the Emperor, it could still be overruled by the imperial constitution and by decisions made jointly in the Diet. Within the EU, sovereignty has much more of the role that Isaiah Berlin formulated as a yardstick of liberty: “frontiers of freedom which nobody should be permitted to cross” (Berlin 2002: 210). Vis-à-vis other members, every member of the compound republic EU has the right of veto in the Council which must be counted as the most important implementation mechanism to strengthen liberty, above all against the threat to hegemony but also against internal tyranny/centralization. It is important to stress that although no member state has the right to enforce decisions or create new laws against the wishes of any single member, the sovereignty of the member states is nevertheless curtailed by the common legal framework. Sovereignty of the member states is thus much stronger vis-à-vis other member states than vis-à-vis the centre. The weakness in the latter respect is expressed above all in the competencies of the ECJ and EU law. The strength of the latter has been interpreted as the establishment of the EU as a “quasi-federal system” (Hix 1999: 110) since parallels to this arrangement have hitherto only been found in federal constitutions (Hix 1999: 109). On the contrary, if the role of sovereignty is understood in its totality, then parallels may be found in other republican arrangements. Once again, the ambivalent role of sovereignty needs to be emphasized. Against other member states it is strong and extensive, corresponding to an institution that restrains the autonomous agency of the members and hence is a means to counter the threat of hegemony. The relative weakness against the centre may be interpreted as a far-reaching compromise with the threat of internal tyranny. If constitutionalism within modern federal polities can be said to be a framework for controlling the state, then the main point of the EU system is to control the states (Gordon 1999: 160). The scope and speed of the process of integration has been constituted by the need to balance centralizing initiatives against the aims of preserving both the liberty and the capacity for autonomous action of the member states. Pinder saw the process of integration in terms of “negative” and “positive” integration. The first referred to “the removal of all measures of national preference within the economic space of the EEC” (Gilbert, Mark 2003: 113). The primary purpose was to create “a new deal for Europe” and to make “war practically impossible.” Pinder

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argues that it is easier to create negative legislation than positive: “a treaty can more easily make ‘thou shalt not’ commandments than ‘thou shalt’ ones.” It is worthwhile to reflect on these two kinds of commandments. “Thou shalt not” commandments constrain the autonomy of action of the commanded. At the same time they strengthen the liberty, that is, what Isaiah Berlin called “freedom from” of actors whose liberty might be violated by the actions of other actors. In turn “Thou shalt” commandments violate the liberty of the commanded whereas they only restrain autonomy of the commanded if the command includes a requirement that certain actions take priority over others. In other words, the former type of commandment strengthens rights whereas the other creates duties (for example, to obey or to act). As we shall see, the strong emphasis on rights and the weak emphasis on duties is an enduring characteristic of the EU as a form of rule. Positive integration corresponded to “the fulfilment and application of coordinated and common policies in order to fulfil economic and welfare objectives other than the removal of discrimination” (Pinder 1968: 90). Pinder’s argument mainly pertained to economic integration but the emphasis on negative integration bears striking resemblance to Deudney’s (1995: 208–210) assertion that “negarchy” lies at the heart of Republican Security Theory. Integration has moved in a space defined by liberty and autonomous agency. Autonomous agency of the members was constrained by negative integration and simultaneously their liberty limited the extent to which positive integration, i.e. autonomous agency, of the centre could be pursued.

5.2 The European Union and systems in the environment Chapter 1 presented a conception of world politics as a systemic milieu in which different systems exist in parallel to each other in hierarchical or egalitarian arrangements (Luhmann 1995: 181–182). The EU system has two principal systems in its environment, the international and the Atlantic system centred on NATO and relations to the United States. The relationship of the EU to both systems resembles and differs from the HRE’s relation to the European system of states. The European system of states had associative traits which attracted imperial estates who thought they could have the same degree of protection and a greater degree of freedom. Chapter 3 demonstrated how wrong they were. The contemporary international system has associative traits expressed in norms and values, international law and international organizations.

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Its degree of embedding and restraint is, however, low compared to the EU system as well as to the Atlantic. The Atlantic system differs from the international by being a system of collective action that can constitute itself as an actor. Its formal institutions embed themselves deeper in the organizational structure of the members and socialize them into a tighter community of values and common identities. The EU, the Atlantic system and the international system coexist in the same systemic milieu and most European countries can choose between them as systems of action that construct different roles and prescribe and prohibit different identities and actions (cf. March and Olsen 1989). They influence each other constitutively (Luhmann 1995) but in different ways. The embedding of the major powers of the Western world in two interlocked systems, the EU and the Atlantic, has undoubtedly stabilized the international system and lessened the risk of war. Similarly, the HRE had a stabilizing influence on the European system of states (Heeren 1819, Watson 1997). It is also possible that a certain transfer of values has taken place from the EU and the Atlantic to the international which has, schematically put, moved it from a Hobbesian towards a more Lockean or even Kantian character (Wendt 1999). Unfortunately, a full exposition thereof lies outside the remit of this book. The constitutive effects of the Atlantic system on the EU system are, however, one of its main questions and this is developed in the following section. The nesting of the EU system by the Atlantic goes deeper and has a different character than the way the European system of states nested the HRE. Whereas that mainly, but not exclusively, took the form of non-intentional influence, the EU’s nestedness in the Atlantic takes the form of a formal regulation of action. Because of this relationship it is important to describe the EU’s regulation of the external relations of its members, the fourth aspect of any form of rule, in connection with its relation to the Atlantic system. As stated in the introduction, this influence is principally stabilizing but there is also a corrosive potential in the relationship between the EU and the Atlantic system. However, if one system should be weakened it would have destabilizing effects on the other. The repercussions of such a scenario on European and international security would be considerable. We have to consider that as forms of rule the international, Atlantic and EU systems are very different in terms of their identities and relations to each other, to the centre and to external factors. The EU and the Atlantic systems have collective restraints and possibilities that the international system lacks. Its difference from the republican EU and

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the embedding, albeit not republican, Atlantic system is highlighted by Onuf (1998: 131). The law of territorial jurisdiction grants each state a protective shell for the exercise of sovereignty. If states are sovereign, then they have rights of possession and use with respect to their own territory but not the territory of other states, except of course by agreement. Sovereign states function like rights-bearing individuals in liberal circumstances. Hobbesians, Lockean or somewhere in between... The Atlantic system The involvement of the United States with Europe after 1945 fundamentally transformed European international politics. The United States assumed the role of an external protector of the continent by taking care of the security concerns of France, Italy, West Germany and the UK vis-à-vis the Soviet Union but also – and perhaps more importantly – visà-vis one another. As the pacifier of Europe (Joffe 1984) the USA laid the foundations for European integration. The Cold War dynamic created an “overlay” that removed regional tensions within western Europe (Buzan 1991: 219–221 and also 202–205, 207–209, 215, 218). However, the American presence allowed western Europe to overlay itself. The importance of the United States goes beyond traditional bilateral alliances. The United States as a benign hegemon has consistently supported and facilitated European integration and identified its security interests with the maintenance of a republican form of rule in Europe. Karl Deutsch et al. (1957) identified the unique character of the UScentred system as a security community, a conception that has subsequently been elaborated upon by writers such as Adler and Barnett (1998a) and Risse-Kappen (1996a). Other attempts to understand the US- centred system of relations in terms close to that of a form of rule often settle on imperial metaphors (Bacevich 2002, Ferguson 2004, Johnson 2004, Mann 2003). In the terms of the framework used by this book, it has created a system of action that nested the European system. This system, which I call the Atlantic, was launched in 1949 when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created (Kaplan 1984, Heller and Gillingham 1992). It is a distinct form of rule which contains formal institutions, bilateral ties and values and norms that prescribe the identities of the members, their relations to each other, to the centre and to systems in the environment differently than in the international system. The Atlantic system allows certain actions to be performed in accordance

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with the rules of its institutions. Hence it is not defined spatially but by the actions undertaken through it. It can be used in relations between member states in formal settings, such as NATO council meetings, between two or more actors outside the formal contexts and between one or more members and external actors. Members can act collectively, as NATO, or individually by following the rules of the system. Hence in the same way as the EU, the Atlantic system is both actor and structure. The Atlantic and the EU systems were created to ward off similar threats, some of which correspond to republican threats. Three factors were crucial to American involvement in European affairs: the Soviet threat, Communist subversion in the European member states and a revanchist Germany (Hoffmann 1995a: 35). The combination of motives was crucial: the way to counter external threats was integration in the field of defence within NATO. An economically strong Europe was necessary for a strong defence against the Soviet threat and the best way to immunize western Europe against internal communist takeovers. It would also insulate the world economy from prolonged periods of recession like the 1930s. Europe could neither be militarily defended nor economically rebuilt without German participation. Hence re-armament and regaining of some sovereignty were necessary. After the failure of the European Defence Community in the 1950s this could only take place with Germany as an integral part of the NATO forces and command structure. Not only was the former pariah included in 1954 and western Europe strengthened but the means to do it – integration – also ensured the removal of Germany as a potential threat (NATO 1954, Joffe 1987: 177–180). In a situation analogous to 1648, an international solution was applied to a problem that involved both internal (to the Empire and Europe, respectively) factors and external ones (Habsburg interests in Austria and Spain). In both cases, outside actors made themselves permanent quasi-insiders. Historically the EEC/EU system was nested in the Atlantic system since the members of the former regulated their relations with external systems through the latter. For the UK as well as for Germany, NATO was a safeguard or enhancement of their capacity for action – although on different levels and not autonomously. For all members NATO, the American military presence and close political ties with Washington were means to ensure their survival not only against the Warsaw Pact but also against potential aggressors among other European states. However, the French view of NATO has always been ambiguous, since it

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also saw NATO as a threat to autonomy. In sum, NATO complemented or even surpassed the EC/EU in warding off the threats of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy as well as external security pressures. Comparing them as forms of rule yields a clear image of the differences between the Atlantic and the EU systems. Although the Atlantic system has significant republican traits with regard to its political purposes, these are much less clear regarding the institutional implementation mechanisms. The two systems organize the relations between the members differently in terms of ties and autonomy. In the Atlantic system the liberty of the members is far-reaching since only Articles 4 and 5 of the NATO Charter contain obligations (NATO 1949 Articles 4 and 5 NATO 2001: 527–528). With the exception of war, the system does not protect the liberty of its members. The agency of the members has been collectively strengthened through the alliance but their autonomy is only restrained in the field of military security and this de facto restraining varies from country to country. The UK, France and possibly Germany are the only European states with the capacity for significant autonomous actions (Shaw 2000: 201). Sovereignty plays a key role in regulating relations between members in both systems. In the Atlantic its function is similar to the international global system. In the EU it has the ambiguous function of restraining and being restrained. In the Atlantic system sovereignty is a much less restrained safeguard of the liberty of the members. There are many more institutions that restrain autonomous agency within the EU than in the Atlantic system. The duties as well as rights of the members are functionally delimited. The articles of the North Atlantic Treaty are “thou shalt” (commitment) rules rather than “thou shalt not” (restraining). Hence the Atlantic system limits the autonomy of the members rather than strengthening their liberty. The central institutions are a major difference between the EU and the Atlantic system. There are two kinds of centres in the Atlantic system. Firstly the central institutions of NATO: the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the Defence Planning Committee (DPC) and the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). These have no agentic capabilities since they are fora in which the members meet. The formal institutions that consist of NATO’s 39 committees in which actual integration occurs strengthen the restraining of autonomy (NATO 2001: 278–301). With the crucial exception that France is not a member of the DPC, the NPG and the High Level Group (NPG/HLG), all NATO members participate in all committees. Secondly, the Atlantic system has a centre in its most powerful and important member, the United States.

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The United States plays several roles in the Atlantic system. Its overwhelming military strength allows it to protect the European members from external threats and from each other. Its economic strength has for a long time given it influence as it is able to bestow material gains or inflict economic damage. Because of its political and military strength and institutional position it has effective control over NATO resources. The United States has military intelligence sources that surpass all other member states, making them reliant on US assets. The bilateral ties with the USA are an important part of the foreign policy of all EU member states. In fact, all can be said to have a kind of relationship with the USA that they do not necessarily have with each other. In particular, “the larger member states, [prefer] to keep their own direct lines open to Washington and to prefer them to more cumbersome procedures” (Hannay 2000: 279). Apart from these significant material assets it also possesses two more intangible resources. Its cultural and ideological prestige and power make it possible for it to bestow status gains (Nye 1990) and it is in a unique position to define the purpose of the system. Therefore it is indispensable for the maintenance of the Atlantic system. Since the identity of each member is constructed through the Atlantic system, the USA is indispensable to that particular identity construction. All these characteristics bring the United States into the position of the dominant external actor described abstractly in Chapter 2. Its position is analogous to that of France in the European states-system of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hence it possesses the capacity both to foster consensus for action and to divide the EU as a compound republic. Primary tools of both capacities are to displace fears of centralization (powers already centralized), mediation (offshore balancer), ideational and material incentives. The degree of centralization is a striking difference between the two systems. In the EU system, centralization of authority, especially over capacities associated with the core of the nation-state, is seen as threatening to the autonomy of the members. In the Atlantic system an unprecedented centralization of the military means of violence is accepted by all members. It is also fundamentally contrary to the aims of a compound republic. Its core institutions are also fundamentally contrary to the aims of a compound republic. For example: The hierarchy of command headed by with the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), who is always an American General, the dependence upon common or US planning assets and – primarily during the Cold War – the organisation of armed forces into a common structure

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(McInnes 1990). It has been noted that western European actors have little problem (again with the exception of France) with centralization under a US aegis in the field of military security and prefer its “hegemony” to one that would be exercised by one of their own (Art 1996). The de facto centralization of the capacities of conventional warfare of all member states is the very thing that republican structures are most concerned with avoiding. This seems to indicate that collective action through the Atlantic system is not inhibited by the kind of problems associated with action by the EU. Operations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan demonstrate that the Atlantic system does not suffer from the strategic paradox, despite its republican traits. Equality is a precondition of centralization. Groups made up of the more powerful countries are controversial, since this introduces “an inequality among the American protégés” (Parmentier 2000: 102). Although informal directorates are sometimes used, caution is necessary, since excluding members from these groups violates the community norm of equality (Parmentier 2000: 101). Importantly, members of the Atlantic system retain authority over the armed forces. On notable occasions, like the Vietnam war, NATO allies refused to join the USA in war. For these reasons, the Atlantic system is not an alternative republic. Its institutions are different and they are thinner and less restraining. Most important of all, they do not restrain the most important member and the currently system- dominant actor, the United States. However, collective action through the Atlantic system is a legitimate exit option for the EU members. It could also be argued that since military assets, combat forces as well as transport and planning resources, are already centralized in the NATO organization, actors have little choice but to use the Atlantic system as a collective actor if they desire large-scale power projection. As an external system for which routinized procedures exist, the Atlantic system seems to solve the EU’s strategic dilemma by enabling actions that would,if performed within the EU context, activate the very threats that the EU is constructed to avoid. In sum, the Atlantic system has, firstly, given the EU members a unique possibility of avoiding the internal deadlocks of the compound republic, and secondly, protected the European states, which has meant that their republic has not been exposed to the tensions that arise when unavoidable choices have to been made between preserving the constitution of the republic and fighting off an external threat. Because the European states did not have to fight collectively during the Cold War, the dual system of protection was not tested under real condition until Yugoslavia disintegrated in a series of civil wars from 1990 onwards. Thirdly, as we shall see

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below, the system has made it possible to act externally through NATO, which averted the external pressures; however, not acting through the EU damaged its legitimacy. Finally, the inability to act autonomously may over time undermine the legitimacy of the EU, particularly since its politicians have increasingly argued that external action is part of its political purpose. However, acting alone is problematic for the EU because it is a compound republic. The solution, therefore, is a balancing act in which action cannot be too decoupled because it will create tensions within the Union, but it cannot be too closely tied to the USA and the Atlantic system because it creates a legitimacy deficit. The internal strategic paradox has thus been overlaid but this overlay has created another paradox in relation to its external protector. The relation between the EU and the Atlantic system The relation between the EU and the Atlantic system has changed from a situation when the EEC/EU system was completely nested in the Atlantic system, since the members of the former regulated their relations with external systems through the latter, to a situation where the EU system has more and more emerged from the Atlantic. This emergence, however, is far from complete. Instead it is partial, negotiated and subject to controversies and political struggles. The organization of its nesting in the Atlantic system and eventual emergence from it is one of the most important questions for the future viability of the EU in international politics. Successive US administrations have seen the European integration project as a part of the Atlantic integration project. Western European economic integration was enthusiastically supported and the USA acted as an intermediary during the negotiations for the Coal and Steel Union in 1950 (Urwin 1995: 48, Lundestad 1998: 28–29). Because they strengthened the military community of the West, the security effects of Franco- German reconciliation were viewed positively. While German rehabilitation through NATO was in the eyes of American politicians more a means to a greater end, the French and Germans saw reconciliation and embedding through the EC as ends in themselves. American endorsement of European integration has not been without misgivings. The risk of integration creating an entity that might have positions different from Washington or even become a rival of the USA has been traumatic (Hoffmann 1995b, Lundestad 1998: 166–169). In the 1950s and 1960s, the division between the two systems was clear; the EC system was used between European actors, and the Atlantic – through the NATO institutions – was used in relations with external factors. This division applies to situations where collective action systems

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were used. For example, throughout the processes of decolonization each European power acted as an individual nation-state and the convention of domaine reservées prevented EC intervention (Smith, Michael 2004: 124). The limited claims of the EC system meant that the relation between the systems only exceptionally became a political issue, as in the case of French veto to British membership of the EEC. When the EC was transformed into the EU and reshaped as a political union in 1992, the system began regulating some of the members’ relations to external systems. The CFSP was the expression of the ambition of the EU to constitute itself as an actor, not just a system regulating the relations of the members to each other. This was not the first attempt to do so, but earlier attempts had been too bold or too modest in their ambitions. Attempts to include regulation of relations to systems in the environment began in the 1950s with the European Defence Community (EDC), which failed because France believed that its integrations of armed forces went too far. The EDC would have meant an integrated command structure with German and Benelux forces placed under French military command. In the 1970s the European Political Cooperation (EPC) was launched. It attempted closer coordination of the foreign policies of the member states and information-sharing measures (Pijpers, Regelsberger and Wessels 1988, Urwin 1995: 152, Duke 2000, Dinan 2004: 143). With political union in 1992 several elements regulating external relations were added. Firstly, international trade policies were to be conducted through the Commission, removing an aspect of external power from the member states and thereby embedding them further with each other. Secondly, a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) was created. The CFSP is by no means the only aspect of the EU system that relates to security but it is the way that the Union can relate to external factors collectively in this field. Its objectives are: (1) to safeguard common values, fundamental interests and independence of the Union; to strengthen the security of the Union and its Member States in all ways; (2) to preserve peace and strengthen international security, in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter ... (3) to promote international cooperation; (4) to develop and consolidate democracy and the rule of law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. (EU 1992: 123– 124 Title V Article J.1) During the 1990s and 2000s the European states acted externally through both the EU and Atlantic systems. Organizing relations between

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the two systems became important not only for the sake of greater output efficiency but for the sake of internal stability and managing the tensions within the compound republic. The following section traces processes from 1990 to 2010.

5.3 The European Union in world politics 1992–2010 The Balkans from containment to embrace 1990–1999 The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s confronted the EC/EU system with its greatest security challenge. The American protector had shielded Europe from the external threat of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. When the Cold War ended in 1989–91, the European republic faced great uncertainties and challenges. The future of NATO, the continued American presence, the European project and indeed the future organization of Europe in general seemed wide open. The rapid descent of Yugoslavia into genocidal civil wars suddenly provided Europe with an image of anarchy unleashed and politicians began to fear spillover effects. The worst threat was a return to the past of unrestrained European nation-states pursuing balance of power politics, competing for influence in the newly opened parts of Europe and eventually coming into conflict (Mearsheimer 1998). To prevent the turbulence of the Yugoslav wars and the uncertainty of the fragile central and eastern European countries (CEECs) from destabilizing their compound republic, the EC/EU states pursued three strategies: containment, military engagement through NATO and expansion of the republican sphere through enlargement. All three correspond to the aim of avoiding the republican threats. They also reflect a clear hierarchy of goals where internal stability takes precedence over dealing with external pressures. This line of action was possible because of the EU’s nesting in the Atlantic system, which makes external threats less acute. Although containment and military action through NATO saved the EU from the republican threats of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy and relieved external pressures, they undermined the legitimacy of the EU as an actor in foreign affairs. Previous research has seen the EC/EU’s handling of the post-Yugoslav wars as a failure (Ginsberg 1999 is an exception). The lack of intervention is explained by arguing that the EU lacked adequate institutions, insights or vital interests (Ullman 1996b: 18) – or that each country acted self-interestedly (Gompert 1996: 142, Duke 1997: 18). None of these explanations is wrong but none of them is sufficient and they spring from a too limited understanding of the EU. The EC/EU member

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states had indeed vital interests to defend in connection with the Yugoslav wars – preserving the Union and ensuring that the wars did not lead to situations that activated the republican threats such as centralization due to a need for action (tyranny, oligarchy) or divisions due to different interests (anarchy). The system was constructed in such a way that politicians acted on the basis of an order of priority, entailing that a loss of legitimacy was accepted as long as the republican threats were prevented. It is significant that the Yugoslav wars and the precarious situation of the newly independent states in central Europe did not lead to intrigues, rivalry and wars between the western European countries (Ullman 1996a: 3–4). What did not happen must have a central place in our attempts to theoretically understand what kind of form of rule the EU is and what its organizational logics are. The expansion of the republican sphere suggests what form of rule we are dealing with. It did not resemble the expansion of empires or of nation-states. It resembles the expansion of the USA in order to prevent a destabilizing states-system in its geographically immediate environment. The fact that none of the strategies we are used to from the history of the inter-state form of rule in European history, but rather the strategies of containment, engagement and expansion took place demonstrates that a compound republic had been established in Europe. 1990–1993: Containment against disunion Containment was a way to prevent anarchy within the republic by preserving the status quo, and ending the conflicts regardless of outcome. The combined aims of avoiding internal conflict, preserving status quo and countering instability are consistent with the strategic purposes of the republic. Avoiding engagement that might worsen the tensions within the EU was the primary aim of the EC/EU. In 1990 the Yugoslav republic began to break up (Meier, Viktor 1999: 138ff). Even before Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence on 25 June 1991, the EC was working to keep Yugoslavia intact and contain the conflict (Woodward 1995: 295). The two would-be secessionists were either ignored or strongly dissuaded (Meier, Viktor 1999: 220ff, Woodward 1995: 160–163). The EC’s unwillingness to support any change was due to fears that Yugoslavia might provide the Soviet Union with a model for its collapse, the inviolability of borders stated by the Helsinki Charter, that minority problems in Italy and Spain might be exacerbated and that the newly independent states might fall into a “German sphere of influence” (Meier, Viktor 1999: 220). In these scenarios we recognise the republican threats of anarchy and oligarchy

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in the shape of a general fear of instability outside the Community’s borders and of Europe returning to the pre-1945 system characterized by great power rivalry. After the brief war in Slovenia, the EC continued its attempts to stop the disintegration of Yugoslavia by rejecting Dutch proposals to send a peacekeeping force and pushing for a United Nations (UN) weapons embargo (Meier, Viktor 1999: 228, Woodward 1995: 180). The EC continued to pressure the Slovenes to rejoin the federation (Meier, Viktor 1999: 231). As fighting intensified in Croatia the EC increased its efforts to create a modified federal Yugoslavia. Led by the UK, it granted a great number of concessions to Serbia in order to secure its acquiescence (Meier, Viktor 1999: 233–234). Concern with internal cohesion was particularly strong in the autumn of 1991 since negotiations for the Maastricht treaty were being concluded. The ongoing negotiations over German reunification also caused uncertainty and concern in the rest of Europe. The fear of a return of the historical “German problem” not only gave European integration new impetus (Dinan 2004: 243–244), it also made other EC countries more anxious not to isolate Germany. The question whether to recognize the breakaway republics divided the Union. The decision as to which of the new states the EU should recognize was made on the basis of which choice posed the least risk of divisions and instability within the Union and not on international law or humanitarian concerns. While Croatia’s treatment of the Serbian minority was problematic, Macedonia’s ethnic composition was not. Nonetheless, the EC recognized Croatia but not Macedonia. The reason was that Germany was pursuing a diplomatic campaign for the recognition of both Slovenia and Croatia while Greece strongly objected to Macedonian statehood. In order to preserve internal unity in the sense of neither making Germany an outlier once it had decided not to unilaterally recognise Slovenia and Croatia nor to create a head-on confrontation with Greece, the Community settled for a compromise (Gnesotto 1994). Rather than alienating Germany from the EC mainstream that was opposed to recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, the mainstream moved to embrace the German stance. After Germany had recognized Croatia and Slovenia on 23 December, the EU followed suit on 15 January 1992. Historical contingency does not provide the only explanation for the importance given to internal cohesion. Avoiding internal threats, like anarchy, is rather a goal towards which the logic of appropriateness of the EU system is structurally oriented. Chapter 2 argued that the compound republic is geared towards the avoidance of internal conflicts as much as – or even more than – dealing with external pressures. Hence

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the former takes precedence over the latter. Chapter 3 demonstrated that in the HRE internal stability took precedence over avoiding the internal threat of centralization over defence against the Turks in 1663. Chapter 4 demonstrated that similar fears of internal security were strong in the early United States until the end of the war of 1812–1814. Throughout 1992 and 1993 the EU retained the containment strategy coupled with economic sanctions in its attempts to broker peace in the former Yugoslavia. The EU became involved as a mediator together with the UN. Successive UN resolutions tried to restrain the conflict by imposing a weapons embargo on the entire former Yugoslavia, creating, deploying and reinforcing the United Nations Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) for Bosnia and Croatia (UNSCR 743, 749, 836; Kaufman 2002). Although it reluctantly recognized Bosnia after US pressure, it resisted attempts to lift the embargo which would have allowed the independent state the right to de facto self- defence (Ginsberg 1999: 233, Kaufman 2002: 79–81). A desire to contain the conflict and to avoid escalation that might either bring differences within the Union to the surface or force the Union as a whole to act explains the otherwise enigmatic repeated unwillingness by the European contributors to let the US air force protect their UNPROFOR troops for fear of escalating the conflict and putting their personnel at risk (Gompert 1996: 133, Ullman 1996a: 19 and Woodward 1995: 297). Both the EU and the USA stated a willingness to support and enforce any stable agreement the parties could reach (Woodward 1995: 187 199, 303, Gompert 1996: 139). The will to act in order to control the Yugoslav conflicts was high during the initial phase but the chief indication of republican institutions is that all actions were curtailed in order to preserve unity within the EC/EU. Gnesotto (1994) understands these measures as “inconsistent” but they were consistent with regard to preserving EU unity. The EU was unable to formulate a proactive strategy towards Yugoslavia during the first three years. These require a measure of centralization and possibly hierarchical decision-making procedures which the EU did not have in the foreign policy field at the time. Curzon Price and Landau (1999: 12–13) argue that the EU “is constitutionally incapable of leadership ... the EU has shown that consensus and compromise do not normally produce clear, high- quality decisions and simple rules that apply to all.” This interpretation is misleading since it is much easier to produce consensus around “thou shalt not” rules than around “thou shalt” rules in a compound republic. Given the existence of conflicting positions within the EC/EU, attempts to form a proactive strategy would have brought such differences out into the open and exacerbated

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them. Rather than being the result of different national interests, the actions of the EC/EU member states restrained “national (i.e. separate) interests” and promoted the common interest of containment. Ignoble as it was, the negative strategy of restraint on the part of the EC/EU and of containment of ex-Yugoslav protagonists became the only feasible initial strategy. Containment corresponds to the second option of the first action model outlined in Chapter 2: agreement not to act, which does not trigger the first three compound republic threats but raises doubts about EU legitimacy (loss of legitimacy) and paralysis. 1993: Expansion as a response to the Yugoslav conflicts With Yugoslavia disintegrating, EU strategy towards the CEECs was coloured by the need to stabilize them but in ways that did not destabilize the EU. The initial policy of granting association agreements to stave off their ambitions to become full members resembled the strategy of containment between 1991 and 1992 (Baun 2000: 30–32, 35, 37–38). The EU changed its strategy in June 1993 by stating its intention to allow CEECs to become members (Avery and Cameron 1998: 27 and EU 1993: 13). The requirements for membership reflected a preoccupation with stability: stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, human rights, rule of law, protection of minorities, functioning market economy, acceptance of the acquis communautaire and the obligation to adhere to the “aims of political, economic and monetary union” (EU 1993: 13). The stability pact added the settling of border disputes, respect for international borders and granting minorities rights and protection to the criteria for membership (EU 1993: 16, Sjursen and Smith 2001: 10, Smith, Karen 2003: 122–123). The Copenhagen summit declared that the EU would begin negotiations with a number of CEECs, increase its assistance and enhance its efforts to further economic integration between the EU and Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (EU 1993: 28–34). The decision to embark on the path to eastern enlargement was a major shift in strategy. The intensifying conflict in Bosnia as well as excommunist parties assuming power in CEECs played a decisive role in this change. Despite their differences the same kind of motives underpinned both containment and expansion of the republican sphere. Many factors played a part in the decision to enlarge, but the Yugoslav conflicts were a driving factor. Initially, all members of the European Union with the exception of Germany and the UK and the Commission were sceptical or opposed to enlargement. Two of the reasons were consistent with the compound republic model: the fear of destabilizing the

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EC (the anarchy threat) (Sjursen and Smith 2001: 7–8) and the fear of increased German influence (the oligarchy threat) (Baun 2000: 39–40). The link between the two issues, namely that dilution of the EC would threaten its capacity to integrate and hence solve the “German question” after the end of the Cold War (Baun 2000: 26–27) lends further credence to a republican interpretation. The constant German interest in enlargement also led the other EU members to embrace enlargement in order “to retain Germany’s future commitment to the EC” (Baun 2000: 46). The spectre of the CEECs becoming destabilized or even falling into civil war like in Yugoslavia was a major reason to begin enlargement (Sjursen and Smith 2001: 9, Smith, Karen 2003: 113). The Copenhagen criteria and the stability pact explicitly identified concerns over democracy, liberty, market economy, peaceful external relations and solving minority issues. Hence by extending its republican sphere the EU acted in order to prevent or defuse conflicts (Higashino 2004, Missiroli 2002: 58, Cremona 2003: 184–185, 197, Smith, Karen 2003: 121). 1994–1995: Military engagement by NATO Military engagement was a legitimate exit option from the EU system since it was undertaken through the Atlantic system. The European members of NATO temporarily withdrew from the compound republic framework in order to stop the fighting together with the Americans. The effect was a loss of EU prestige as a security actor. A switch of systems was made since it was possible to act without triggering the strategic paradox and since action with the USA and through NATO did not require centralization or delegation of authority between the European powers. In August 1994 containment was abandoned as NATO began bombing Bosnian Serb targets. The intensified fighting, the slaughtering of civilians in UN-protected areas and violence against UN peacekeepers lead to NATO engagement. The strikes stopped on 16 September after the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic accepted terms dictated by the North Atlantic Council. On 1 November the Bosnian peace negotiations began in Dayton, Ohio, and a peace agreement was signed in Paris on 14 December. At the conference the EU was substantially marginalized not only by the leadership of the USA but also by the UK and France who were acting independently (Ginsberg 1999: 236, NATO 1995). On 20 December the Bosnia Peace Implementation Force (IFOR) assumed command of operations in Bosnia. The EC had first deferred the Yugoslav issue to the UN, and then the UN deferred the issue to NATO as a regional security organization.

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An entire year passed between the London conference in 1992 when the UK and France rejected US air support of their UNPROFOR troops and when the NAC agreed to commit troops to peacekeeping operations in 1993, thus directly involving NATO. Thus rather than a setup of motives or interests directing the choice of system, the choice of system – through a series of contingencies – constituted the choice of action. Abandoning containment through the EU and adopting military engagement through the Atlantic system averted the threats to the EU that might have arisen if members had acted unilaterally or in ad hoc coalitions (anarchy, oligarchy and inner tyranny). This strategy corresponds to the models of action outlined in Chapter 2 in which the compound republic avoids the strategic paradox by using external systems. However, bypassing the EU due to the failure of containment to stop the violence dealt a blow to its prestige as a security actor. Nevertheless, the strategy of containment had still had the desired effects of minimizing conflict within the EU and of containing the conflict to Yugoslavia. Hence the EU was quite successful as a security system regulating relations between its members but was less so as an active protagonist and peacekeeper. 1997–2003: Expansion of the republican sphere In 1997 the strategy of expansion was directed towards the Western Balkans with the formulation of the Regional Approach (EU 2005a). The EU established political and economic conditionality for the development of bilateral relations with Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania, and Macedonia (FYROM). When the expansion strategy was formulated in 1993 and reinforced in 1997 the explicit purpose was conflict avoidance in central and eastern Europe. Yugoslavia seemed lost, but the conflicts would not be allowed to spread further. After the success of the proactive solution at Dayton, the strategy of expansion became coloured by engagement. No longer intended merely to prevent conflict, it became a way to transform a post- conflict region. Political order was to be directly imposed. The same year the Commission released Agenda 2000, which required specific changes in candidate countries based on the Copenhagen criteria (Smith, Karen 2003: 116). It also stressed the need for applicants to settle border disputes among themselves and with third parties. The Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 formalized the resolution of border disputes as a condition of EU membership (Sjursen and Smith 2001: 10–11). On 30 March 1998, negotiations were opened with five CEECs and Cyprus (Curzon Price and Landau 1999: 10). Interestingly, the Atlantic system also expanded. In 1997, at the

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NATO summit in Madrid, the Alliance announced that it would invite the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to become members in 1999 (NATO 1997, Kaufman 2002: 49–51). While Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia were stabilized, violence erupted in the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1998. Action directed against Serbia was now handled almost exclusively through NATO. The Serbian government and Kosovar Albanian representatives were made to negotiate, beginning on 7 February. The negotiations broke down on 19 March as the Serbian representatives refused to sign a draft agreement that the Kosovar delegation had agreed to. On 24 March NATO began bombing Serbia in earnest. The EU declared its full support for the campaign (Ginsberg 1999: 246). Serbia began its withdrawal from Kosovo on 9 June and NATO bombings ended on the following day. The EU played a key role in resolving the conflict as a settlement with Serbia was negotiated through the emissary of the Council presidency and the Russian foreign minister (Ginsberg 1999: 247–249). After the NATO campaign in 1999 the expansion strategy was revitalized, just as it had been in 1995 after the Dayton agreement. Enlargement of the EU gained a new sense of urgency and was moved up the EU’s agenda. The spread of the conflicts of the early 1990s to Kosovo once again raised fears of spillover to neighbouring countries (Higashino 2004: 358). At the European Council in December 1999, the EU decided to open negotiations with all candidate countries (Baun 2000: 127–128 EU 1999b § 1: 10). It did so both with the countries in the first wave of enlargement (Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) and with the countries of southeastern Europe (Bulgaria, Rumania and the former Yugoslav Republics). Association agreements and future membership of the EU began to be viewed as the primary way to stabilize the whole peninsula. This was a major change as the Yugoslav republics had been told in 1991 that they would never become members of the Community. In May 1999 the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) was initiated for Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia but also for Serbia and Montenegro (EU 2005d and EU 2005b). The primary tools for changing the political order in the Western Balkans were: foreign aid with political conditionality; the preferential trade agreements; the stabilisation and association process (SAP) (EU 2005c); the stability pact for the Western Balkans; reform of the judicial and economic systems (adoption of the acquis communautaire) in order to conform to EU standards; and the future possibility of full membership based on the Copenhagen criteria and the Balladur Plan. Expansion extended to the Western Balkans

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as a direct strategy to handle the aftermath of the Yugoslav conflicts. The stability pact, launched in Cologne 1999, also conditions closer ties between the EU and the Western Balkans on the development of closer relations among the countries of the region themselves. This feature was reminiscent of making aid given to European countries by the American Marshall plan after World War to conditional on closer cooperation between European countries (Ginsberg 1999: 250). Transforming the Balkans Demonstrating that the EU used these strategies to minimize uncertainty and instability emanating from systems in the environment that might destabilize the republic leaves us with two puzzles: how was it possible that the EU could act in an increasingly concerted fashion in relation to the environment when, as a compound republic, it has problems with external action, and why was expansion of the republican sphere such an attractive and successful approach? There are two answers to the first puzzle. First, external control by expansion of the republican system was not identified as a security policy task – although it served such ends. Republican threat perceptions are most salient in relation to security or “high” politics and placing enlargement outside this field may have “desecuritized” this strategy for order. Furthermore the EU possessed the institutional tools for enlargement and had used them in 1972, 1982 and 1986. These institutions enabled non-hierarchical decision-making in this field, which the EU lacked in traditional foreign policy. Using them would not activate threats of inner tyranny or oligarchy. Second, over the course of the decade the stability of the EU system increased after the successful conclusions of the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties in 1992 and 1997. The relation between the EU and the Atlantic system was also stabilized and reformed into a successful cohabitation in the new geopolitical climate, which had been far from certain in the early 1990s. In sum, intra- and inter-system stability lessened the need for containment towards the CEECs as well as towards the Balkans as a defensive strategy to preserve internal EU unity. Gradually expanding the republican sphere was attractive because it offered a way to constitutively control systems in the environment through the EU’s own institutions. The EU is not unique in having to control systems in the environment. Organizational research stresses the need for organizations to reduce or to manage dependency on and uncertainty in the environment (Scott, W Richard 2003: 134). Indeed, expanding the formal as well as informal institutions of the own organization so that they encompass significant aspects of the environment

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can be an effective strategy of control (Sjursen and Smith 2001: 12–13, Vachudova 2003: 149–151). In order to reduce uncertainty and dependency, the EU transformed the environment to a form that it could control. Through expansion the EU can control border areas with its own tools and on its own terms. Hence, expansion is a strategy that differs from containment as well as from engagement since it deals with projection (unlike containment) and it employs the institutions of the EU system in a direct fashion rather than those of another system (unlike engagement which used the institutions of the NATO system). The failure to prevent war made it clear that if the institutions of the inter-state system would mediate the relations between the EU, either as individual members or as a single collective, and Central Europe and the Balkans, then the EU would have difficulties handing external events. Instead it would be forced to react with means it could not use without risking the stability of the republic. Containment had been shown to work insofar as the core of the EU was intact, but it had proved to entail a loss of legitimacy. External pressures (e.g. refugees and the possible destabilization of neighbouring countries) could not be contained. Preventing external wars that might involve EU members was tantamount to forestalling the threat of anarchy. The prospect of individual member states engaging in European conflicts was contrary to the EU’s strategic purpose of limiting the autonomous action capacity of its member states. For most member states the possibility of Germany doing so was particularly unsettling. The risk of any one member exercising a disproportionate influence over post- communist European states evoked the threat of oligarchy in an intolerable way. Finally, although using NATO to respond to conflicts had proved successful (especially in tandem with the EU in the resolution of the Kosovo conflict), it entailed the negative effects of dependence on the USA and the loss of EU prestige. During this period the CEECs as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia were brought into the EU’s form of rule as “quasi-insiders” having many of the duties of member states but lacking most of the political rights. The republican order is a form of rule that substitutes the state-interstate order in central and eastern Europe as well as the federal Yugoslav order in the Western Balkans. As such it creates a different configuration among the countries in terms of their identities as well as their relations to 1) each other; 2) a centre – which is the “imaginary centre in Brussels”; and 3) to external actors, in the form of the demands on stable and peaceful external relations (Cremona 2003:

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181–184, Smith, Karen 2003: 108–109, 118). This pertains to the acceptance of the CFSP acquis upon membership as well as restraining of the positive freedom (in the form of informal “thou shalt not” rules) during the application period due to the scrutiny under which applicants are placed. Expansion of the republican system can be understood on a deeper level than simply controlling territories outside the EU. Once the expansion has been completed, the institutions of the compound republic will be able to construct identities and direct the actions of the members. Thus violent conflicts of the kind that is possible in other orders will be severely hindered by the mechanisms of restraint such as the shared ideology of the catalogue of threats. New members will be changed not only through the carefully monitored association process but also by the ongoing socialization that takes place in day-today cooperation in the formal institutions of the Union. These specifically republican traits will, together with the increased possibility of common protection against social destabilization through economic factors, foster stability. Being able to deal with systems in the environment through republican institutions and gradually to incorporate systems into the republican system solved a classic dilemma of republicanism: the tension between empire and liberty. Classical and early modern republican thinkers recognized that the acquisition of foreign territory tended to transform the republic into a coercive empire that extinguished liberty. Suggestions that the EU’s relations to central, eastern and south-western Europe are “imperial” are misleading. Despite superficial similarities like frontier zones (Christiansen, Petito and Tonra 2000: 393, 411) or influence or rule emanating in a gradual fashion from a centre (Waever 2000) it was a republican- democratic order centred on and emanating from the EU that won over the principal alternative, an inter-states system in all of Europe or in its central and eastern parts, cohabiting uneasily with the EU system. For compound republics which have difficulties in acting externally, exercising constitutive control over systems in the environment is a crucial asset to their viability. The alternative, being constitutively influenced by systems in the environment, can lead to corrosion of the republic as a political system. Chapter 5 demonstrated that the United States of America possessed the ability to expand its republican system over an entire continent. The US’ ability to completely mould the part of the environment consisting of territories that were to become members of the Union was a historically unique attribute of the US. It

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prevented the establishment of a states-system in America but it nonetheless almost fatally destabilized the polity. In contrast, the Holy Roman Empire’s inability to use expansion as a strategy to control its environment contributed to its corrosion as a political system. At no point after 1648 did it expand the sway of its republican institutions over new territories. Expansion was possible for individual members (for example Prussia and Austria at the expense of Poland and the Ottoman Empire) but not for the form of rule as a whole (Aretin 1997c). The Empire did not expand in the sense that independently ruled territories became members of the compound republic. Expansion weakened the capacity of the imperial institutions to regulate the identities and actions of the expanding members. Habsburg control over Hungary became a tool in the bid for hegemony in the Empire. Both the United States and the Holy Roman Empire found themselves trapped in predicaments resembling the danger republican writers had cautioned against, imperial adventures hollowing out republican arrangements. Through enlargement and its normative attraction the EU possesses a means to control its environment in a constitutive fashion. This capacity puts it in the opposite position to the Holy Roman Empire. In the latter, political relations were constituted by external factors. The mixed successes in dealing with crises in the environment resulted in the European Union further stressing that the capacity to act internationally was part of its political purpose. Consequently, the members intensified institutions that would enable external action and repair the damage to the EU’s legitimacy wrought by its inability to prevent the Yugoslav wars. Little was done to address the political issues at the heart of member states’ willingness to act. Equally little was done to emphasize that the Union had managed to keep the core of Europe stable through a turbulent decade and thereby fulfilled its political purpose. To its own detriment, perhaps stability had been taken too much for granted or, even more troubling, it is too difficult to translate the success of a system of restraint into political victories. “Non-war” does not make for heroic headlines or secure elections. Creating institutions regulating the relations of members to the environment necessitated a reform of its relations with the system in which the EU was and still is nested, the Atlantic. Negotiating nested systems: the creation of the CESDP Throughout this book I have argued that understanding the way the capacity for organized violence is politically organized is central to understanding the characteristics of a form of rule. In the two previous

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chapters we saw how other variants of the ideal type of the compound republic organized this sphere of politics according to the composition of republican institutions, connections to systems in their environment and geopolitical circumstances and events. As we shall see, equivalent factors shaped the Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP) of the EU. The end of the Cold War necessitated changes in the organization of the defence of the North Atlantic states. Each state had to cut defence spending and restructure their armed forces. Both American and European actors wanted to reorganize the means of collective defence so the European states could assume a larger responsibility for their own defence and security. Initially there were two principal paths to organization of the military capacities of western Europe: The first was an EU capacity for security and defence that would be completely separate from the Atlantic system. The United States as well as several European states who were members of the EU as well as NATO rejected this option. The second was a reformed NATO structure designed to accommodate increased European ambitions and allow a greater degree of European autonomy. Several EU members, most notably France, rejected this option. Because the inability of the European states to respond militarily to the Yugoslav wars was so damaging to its legitimacy, the EU had to build a capacity of its own, to secure not efficiency, but legitimacy. Reorganizing European security and defence was a more fundamental issue than just institution building, it was a political struggle over the degree of the nestedness of the EU in the Atlantic system. The final outcome was a mixed system where the EU remained dependent on NATO resources and, crucially, remained politically coupled to the Atlantic. In terms of output efficiency this system was suboptimal but both process and outcome followed the republican values of the EU system, a development familiar from organizational research (Meyer and Rowan 1991: 41, 45). In conflicts between efficiency criteria and institutional rules that lend legitimacy to actions and institutions, ambitions to strengthen one usually entails sacrificing the other. Hence, reorganization of the EU system and of the relations between the EU and the Atlantic system strengthened the stability of the EU as a compound republic but not in the way of making it an autonomous actor. For many EU members, the United States acts as a lender of last resort against external (security) pressures as well as against security imbalances between the European countries. It stabilizes the EU by expelling the threat of oligarchy. Republican values acted as drivers of this

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process, avoiding internal conflict (anarchy), measures leading to a high degree of centralization (tyranny) and solutions that would result in a situation where smaller members would be prone to domination by the larger ones (oligarchy). A close coupling to the United States and within the Atlantic system was and still is necessary to avoid the republican threats the EU was designed to prevent. Simultaneously, supporting the legitimacy of the EU requires that the Union acquires its own institutions of foreign and security policy (Bird 2007: 192). Because of the resistance to a separate EU capacity from the USA as well as from some European member states, a close coupling between the two systems was a prerequisite for the EU to develop capacities at all. The CESDP was intended to counter the eroding influence on the EU of its incapacity to deal proactively with crises outside its territory. Because of their openness, compound republics are exposed to the threat of losing legitimacy and becoming politically irrelevant in the eyes of their member states. Frustration with political impotence might lead to the abandonment of the system by member states, which would be in conflict with the strategic purpose of embedding. The threat perceptions of the compound republic are discernible in the process that shaped the CESDP as well as the final outcome. I will now treat these matters in turn. The issue of joint European defence capacities was treated both within NATO and within the EU through the 1990s. This was in part because it was an open question for many years whether this capacity would be located in the former or in the latter system. In part this dual process served to reassure the states who were sceptical of an entirely autonomous European defence and consequently an increasingly autonomous EU system. The process was one of joint decision-making between the EU and NATO (EU 2000c: 169). The shared nature of the process is evidenced by the fact that all CESDP decisions taken at EU summits were endorsed in subsequent NAC summits (e.g., NATO 1999b §20–21 and NATO 2000a §28–32). This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that the CESDP was seen, in NATO as well as EU documents, as an implementation of the Brussels (1994), Berlin (1996) and Washington (1999a) decisions by NATO. The reform process was launched in the Atlantic system at the 1994 meeting of the NAC in Brussels. It decided that a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) should be established inside NATO but organized through the dormant West European Union (WEU), which had a close institutional link with the EU (NATO 1994). The Berlin summit in 1996 continued to build the European Security and Defence Identity within NATO (NATO 1996 §7). The Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF)

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concept was created to allow “separate but not separable capabilities in operations led by the WEU” (NATO 1996 §6). The WEU was to become the organization for European capacities but not a separate organization from NATO (NATO 1997 §15). Hence in the field of security politics, the European system was to function as a sub-system within the Atlantic one. There was to be full transparency between the two organizations, NATO personnel were to be “double-hatted” and the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (DSACEUR), who is always a European general, was designated as the preferred operation commander for WEU operations (Whitman 1999: 25). The decisions in the Atlantic system caused controversies in the EU. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg and Spain wanted to fuse the WEU and the EU but Britain wanted to keep them separate (Whitman 1999: 13). The compromise solution was to incorporate the “Petersberg tasks,” a spectrum ranging from peacekeeping to peace enforcement, into the second pillar of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam (Whitman 1999: 8, EU 1997 17: 2). The Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union (IGC) and the subsequent Treaty tied the EU and the WEU closely together and indirectly NATO to the EU (Whitman 1999: 17). The Treaty of Amsterdam reinforced the EU as an international actor by strengthening the CFSP. In 1998 France and the UK went further with the St Malo agreement which stated that the EU needed capacities for autonomous action to implement the Amsterdam provisions of the CSFP and to strengthen and modernize NATO. European countries would act within the framework of the EU and not within the WEU. However, the EU would act when the Alliance as a whole was not engaged. When the EU adopted the Anglo-French stance as its own, the United States cautioned against a decoupling of European decision-making “from broader alliance decision-making” (Albright 1998). Intense diplomacy was required from the British to reassure the USA that the CESDP did not intend to undermine NATO and sever transatlantic links (Yesson 2001: 211). If the American exhortation were indeed to be followed, the EU would be more of a sub-system within the Atlantic in the fields of security and defence. Instead a partial emergence began as it was decided that the EU should acquire capabilities of its own and institutions where the joint authority of the European Council could be exercised. NATO’s Washington Declaration in 1999 endorsed the CESDP but stressed that development of a European capacity should proceed along two lines, within NATO and within the EU. The NAC also stated that all arrangements between NATO and the EU should “respect the requirements of NATO operations and the coherence of its command

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structure” (NATO 1999b §10). The same year the EU committed itself to creating a CESDP that could be used with as well as without NATO assets. The CESDP was designed as an implementation of the Treaty of Amsterdam and of NATO’s Berlin and Washington decisions (EU 1999a §4). Both systems demarcated boundaries against each other as the EU mirrored the NAC by stating that its decision-making autonomy had to be respected. Cooperation with NATO would not be allowed to infringe on the right of the Council to “discuss and decide” matters of policy (EU 1999a §5). The Helsinki European Council decided to establish a force of 60,000 and modalities of consultation between EU and NATO, and to enable the participation of non-EU members. The commitment of national assets to the common venture was to be based on the sovereign decisions of the member states – yet another instance of dispersing the means and authority for organized coercion among the members. The Nice Treaty in 1999 ruled out the possibility of “enhanced cooperation” in defence matters, i.e. a small group of EU members establishing a greater degree of integration among themselves. This was a clear demarcation against oligarchy. It is an important limitation of the members’ autonomous agency in order to preserve the unity of the Union by ensuring that all members are equally embedded in common institutions. The exceptions were bilateral agreements and NATO membership. The latter exception proves the point of the general prohibition; authority and control over the means of violence remain with the members but cooperation between members in defence and security issues must be embedded in collective institutions. This by no means rules out unilateral action or joint operations, as that would limit the liberty of the members; it does, however, prevent the formalization of smaller groups that would lead to concert-style arrangements, excluding certain members and possibly establishing rival groups of members. In this respect the EU differs from the HRE whose members were free to “ally among themselves” (IPO V: 52). The EU continued to develop its capacities through a joint process with the Atlantic system. Simultaneously a number of bridging institutions between EU and NATO were developed. The European Council decided in 2000 to create the formal institutions to manage the CESDP and the modalities of EU–NATO cooperation. These were standing Political and Security Committee (PSC) (EU 2001a), a Military Committee (EU 2001b) and a Military Staff (EU 2001c). It should be noted that the PSC is a body under the European Council (EU 2000c: 191). Their purpose was to give the EU an international role and to contribute to “vitality of the Transatlantic link” (EU 2000c: 168–169).

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Not just the process but also its outcome reflects a republican solution to external and internal security problems. The creation of the CESDP entailed a limited centralization of capabilities and functions as an infrastructure for joint missions under a limited time. During operations, troops that the member states have contributed are placed under a common command but member states clearly retain the authority over the capacities for organized coercion (EU 1999b). Although the CESDP is limited in scope and ambition, its creation was nevertheless hedged about with a number of republican arrangements. That its creation evoked threats of centralization is demonstrated by the frequent reassurances that the EU did not intend to create a standing army (EU 1999b Article II §27: 95, EU 2000c: 168, 176, NATO 2000b: §30). The CESDP cannot be understood only with reference to endogenous factors, such as a convergence of the EU member states’ rational preferences (Howorth 2000a: 34, 48, Howorth 2000b: 384, Whitman 1999: 12). Creating an autonomous military capacity for the EU was threatening, particularly to Atlanticist members, since it would reduce the guarantees provided by the United States against external as well as internal security threats (Hampton and Sperling 2002: 287). Establishing a hierarchy between the Atlantic and EU systems would infringe on the fundamental liberty of the member states to determine their own foreign relations. Therefore a completely autonomous EU capacity would be impossible to create unless an extreme external threat materialized. The United States and European NATO members outside the EU demanded that an EU structure would not discriminate against them. The Nice European Council gave them the right to participate in planning and operations of the CESDP, although the EU would maintain political control and strategic direction (EU 2000c: 208). This provision serves to embed the EU system in the Atlantic one and thereby would seem to exercise a stabilizing influence by binding an even larger number of states. This function echoes Madison’s argument in Federalist Paper number 10. In order to avoid the divisive influence of factions, the number of factions should be increased. In a larger group it will be more difficult to form a coterie that “might concert and execute its plans of oppression” (Madison, Hamilton and Jay 1987: 128). The need to secure an agreement among a large number of states slows down the decision-making process but it stabilizes a larger area by ensuring that the chosen option does not polarize and antagonize major states in the Euro-Atlantic area. The CESDP arrangements meant that the EU system was not a subsystem of the Atlantic in the fields of security and defence, but it was

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nevertheless nested in the Atlantic system. Firstly, this was mirrored in the dependence of the EU on NATO assets (primarily US) for logistics, intelligence and command and control facilities (Schalke 2002: 19–24, EU 2000a: 145, EU 1999c: 85–86, EU 2000b: 158, 161). Secondly, NATO’s “right of first refusal” meant that the initiative for collective action lay within the Atlantic system and NATO has the right to recall capabilities in the event that the organization decides to undertake an operation of collective self-defence as authorized by Article V of the North Atlantic Charter (EU 2000c: 207; NATO 1949). A final restraining factor is the EU’s commitment to conduct CESDP operations in accordance with the UN Charter (EU 2000a: 121 and EU 2000b: 169). Although the EU’s procedural goals were followed in the creation of the CESDP, problems still remained. Since the system for collective action was so complex and time- consuming (NATO 1999b §9d, EU 1999a, EU 1999b: II)) that in a time of grave crisis there was a substantial risk that the system would be side-stepped. Hence, the efficiency of restraining institutions might be self- defeating. The byzantine structure of the CESDP and the geopolitical changes brought about by the attacks on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq ensured that the way the EU could regulate external relations in the field of security and defence would go through another round of reorganization before they began to be used in 2003. The Treaty of Lisbon, finally ratified in 2008, contained new provisions on the CFSP and on the CESDP. It changed the earlier prohibition against enhanced cooperation in the field of security and defence. Under constitutional provisions, however, a limited group of member states who fulfil certain criteria of military capacity may join together in so- called enhanced cooperation. Still, the cooperation is hedged with a number of safeguards whose aims are clearly republican. Article 20 stresses that a more restricted group of members may only be used to further the goals of the Union. It further cautions that they are only to be used as a last resort if the Union as a whole cannot cooperate and act in time. No fewer than nine member states may pursue enhanced cooperation and the Council has to approve the venture with qualified majority. Finally, groups of this kind must be principally open to all member states once they fulfil the military criteria for membership (EU 2008b: 42.6). The Treaty of Lisbon also included guarantees of mutual defence to the constitution of the EU. In case the territory of a member state is attacked all other member states have an obligation of “aid and assistance.” This obligation is qualified by provisions stating that it is in accordance with

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Article 51 of the UN Charter and “it shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States” (EU 2008b: 42.7). Another, more significant, rider is that commitments to the EU shall be consistent with commitments made under the NATO charter “which, for those States which are members of it, remains the foundation of their collective defence and the forum for its implementation” (EU 2008b: 42.7). Once again we see a coupling between the Atlantic and the EU systems which frees the EU members from having to centralize authority and capabilities, in other words the republican threat of inner tyranny. It also ensures the balancing presence of the American protector among the powers of Europe, which protects them against the republican threat of oligarchy. EU military operations in the twenty-first century – from Althea to Atalanta In the 2000s the EU has so far launched four major military operations: Althea in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Arthemis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, EUFOR Chad and Atalanta in the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the Union has launched a number of smaller operations such as police assistance, security sector reform and reforming judiciary systems in other countries. I will focus on the aforementioned four operations because of their greater scale and their military intensity. They could be seen as a fundamental change of the EU that invalidates any interpretation stressing its continued reliance on the United States and NATO and casts doubts on predictions of its inability to act in international politics. In order to make that argument, however, one has to view the EU strictly from a formal-legal perspective and to treat it as sealed off from systems in its environments that are also at the disposal of its member states. As I have argued, this perspective is unrealistic. On the contrary, all four operations conform to the republican model. All display considerable nestedness in external system and other republican forms of restraint. The political autonomy of the operations has been limited since the initiatives have neither come from nor involved taking an autonomous stance vis-à-vis the USA or other great powers like China or Russia. All four operations have been based on mandates from the UN Security Council. The largest ones, Althea and Atalanta, have been preceded by operations carried out through the Atlantic system with similar or identical mandates. Althea succeeded the NATO mission IFOR and Operation Atalanta is carried out parallel to NATO operations and the US-led Combined Task Force (CTF) 151. The US-led operation preceded

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Atalanta and many EU member states have been or are still active participants. Consequently the members have not made an autonomous decision within the EU. Operations Artemis and EUFOR Chad are different since they were French-led interventions in countries where France has had considerable interests and historical ties. Despite resistance from other member states, such as Germany, the EU decided to make the French-led operations into their own with several contributing states. The EU operations did not break the strategic paradox and transformed the republic. None of the operations have involved high-end warfare against serious rivals and they have been very restricted in time. Particularly the French-led operations have been of short duration and hence been on a short political leash. During the decade 2000–2010 member states have carried out several more controversial, militarily intensive and difficult operations individually in Sierra Leone (UK) and the Ivory Coast (France) and collectively in Afghanistan and Iraq (Menon 2009: 243). The EU system was not used for any of these highend operations. In the militarily more taxing collective undertakings they used the Atlantic system, either formally through NATO or in coalition with the USA. It must be stressed that the recent operations are not merely the product of a harmonious dual system free of friction. There is a potential future rift between operations led by one member state supported by a number of smaller contributions and larger more inclusive operations with significant linkage to the Atlantic system. I will now demonstrate the salience of the republican traits in each of the major EU military operations of the twenty-first century. Artemis (Democratic Republic of Congo) 2003 and EUFOR (Chad) 2007 The second Congo war raged between 1998 and 2003. UN peacekeepers had been involved in the country since 1999. In May 2003 Ugandan troops left the north- eastern province of Ituri, allowing militias to terrorize the civilian population. On 30 May 2003 the UN Security Council authorized a military deployment to the Democratic Republic of Congo under Article VII of the UN Charter and in close cooperation with UN troops (Duke 2009, UN 2003). France accepted the call and agreed to serve as the mission leader. After initial resistance, the EU decided to turn the operation into an EU mission with contributions from the UK, Germany and Sweden (Hendrickson, R. et al. 2007: 38, Miskel and Norton 2003: 8). France contributed 80 per cent of the troops, the operational headquarters and over half its staff as well as both force and operation commander (Menon 2009: 240, Ulriksen

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et al. 2004: 520). Artemis lasted only between 12 June and 1 September 2003, but was carried out successfully both in terms of deployment and accomplishing its mission. A similar operation was launched in 2007 in Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). France had and still has strong interests in the region, with a long history of interventions and a permanent presence in Chad since 1986 (Charbonneau 2009: 556). Firstly securing a UN resolution (UNSCR 1778/2007) that would allow intervention, secondly convincing other EU member states of the importance of an ESDP mission, France managed to launch a second framework mission in Africa. This time France was as dominant in terms of military strength as in the Congo and her interests (supporting the Chadian regime) were more pronounced, but there was also a greater number of participant countries. Although formally EU operations and multinational in character, the operations in the Congo in 2003 and in Chad in 2007 have been seen as French operations under an EU cover. The Union’s support of French- dominated operations in areas where France has historical ties and strategic interests has caused suspicion and some friction (Menon 2009: 246, Ulriksen et al. 2004: 520). Operations like Artemis and EUFOR Chad are ambiguous from the viewpoint of European stability. On the one hand they can lead to division if other member states see themselves and the EU as being used to further the interests of a single state. On the other hand, long-term security interests may be served by the EU “laundering” operations undertaken in areas where the interests of a single state predominate. Other EU members provide a certain amount of military and political support and a certain freedom of action for the leading member state, but the common framework also limits and restrains the scope of action of the principally intervening state. For most of the post-1945 period France used to intervene militarily quite liberally and without much European restraint in protecting its interests in Africa (Ulriksen et al. 2004: 509). In contrast to most of the post-war era the EU may now act as a restraining factor on its more interventionist members. Of course the Germans (and others) may rightfully question whether it is in their national interest to intervene in the Congo. What is in theirs and the EU’s interest, however, is that no single member state acts too much unilaterally and emerges out of the system. Still, actions like these where a dominant member state acts with minor military contributions from other member states are undoubtedly Janus-faced, with one destabilizing and one stabilizing side. For this kind of operation to have a

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stabilizing long-term influence, trust is required between the member states and it is necessary that parties with an interest in intervening do not abuse this organizational form. In Chapter 3 we saw that the Habsburgs systematically abused the trust of other estates in themselves as well as in the system as a whole by letting the HRE launder warfare and negotiations undertaken in their own interests. Of course, Artemis and EUFOR Chad were very limited engagements and their restrained nature testifies to the strength of the republican system of the EU. Nevertheless, their destructive potential should not be overlooked. The two other major operations the EU has undertaken, Althea and Atalanta, have followed upon or in the case of the latter, been conducted alongside operations undertaken in the Atlantic system. When the war in Bosnia ended in 1995 the country was stabilized by a NATO force (SFOR). In December 2004 an EU force of 7,000 troops took over the stabilization mission (Bird 2007: 186). In 2007, their number was reduced to 2,000 (EU 2010). Althea is carried out under the “Berlinplus” arrangements, the modalities for allowing EU access to NATO assets. The operation derives its authority from a UNSCR resolution (EU 2004a). It is conducted in a militarily benign environment and can therefore only with difficulty be seen as countering an external pressure in the form of a military threat. Rather it provides support to other two strategies of the EU: First, strengthening institutional ties with the NATO and the Atlantic systems, creating stability by reinforcing the EU’s nestedness. As in other EU operations, third states have been invited to participate (EU 2004b). Second, one of Althea’s goals is to support the stabilization and association process to facilitate future EU membership for Bosnia-Herzegovina (EU 2010). thereby supporting the strategy of expanding the republican sphere which has been analysed above. In November 2008 the EU launched its first joint naval operation, codenamed Atalanta, with a mission to protect the vessels of the World Food Programme (WFP) and commercial shipping from piracy off the Somali coast (EU 2008a §1–2, Wilson 2009). While this would seem like a joint military operation that defies the strategic paradox it is important to take note of the context nesting of Atalanta in the Atlantic and global systems. Firstly, the operation followed on a series of UN resolutions which form the legal basis of its mandate. Secondly, the EU fleet is not the only naval force operating in the waters of Somalia. The UN Security Council decided in June 2008 to authorize naval operations under Article VII of the UN Charter (UNSCR 1816/2008)

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to protect the shipments of the WFP. The Secretary General contacted NATO in September to ask for assistance, which the NAC granted later in October (NATO 2010a). The same month the Security Council issued another resolution (UNSCR 1838/2008) and NATO’s operation Allied Provider commenced. It was followed by operation Allied Protector and the currently ongoing operation Ocean Shield (NATO 2010b). In addition, the multinational naval force CTF 150 has operated in the same waters since 2002. Originally a US navy force, command over the joint task force has moved between the USA, Germany, the UK and Denmark. Originally tasked with combating terrorism, since 2006 its remit has been changed to comprise combating piracy. Combined Maritime Task Forces is a multinational force under the command of an American general and part of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. A wide range of countries participate in the operation including Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Singapore. Most interesting for our purposes are the sizable contributions by European countries such as the UK, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Operations Atalanta, the NATO operations and CTF 150 (which in turn is adjunct to other US-led multinational operations) are different operations from a legal and organizational point of view. The political direction of Atalanta lies under the Political and Security Committee and military planning is conducted by EU institutions. While the operation legally is conducted by the EU, some of its participating member states also participate in the NATO operations and the US-led operation in the same area with the same purpose. This means that Atalanta is not conducted entirely out of the shadow of the external protector or the Atlantic system. Atalanta, like all other CESDP operations, invited countries that are not members of the EU, albeit “without prejudice to the decisionmaking autonomy of the EU or the single institutional framework” (EU 2008a §10). However, countries making significant military contribution “shall have the same rights and obligations in terms of day-today management of the operation as Member States.” So far Ukraine, Croatia, Montenegro and Norway have made contributions. The participation of third states increases numbers and socializes prospective members and neighbours into EU norms. However, this boundary-spanning practice can also be interpreted as a safeguard against tyranny and oligarchy since it makes the operation less EUexclusive. The time limits imposed on operation Atalanta are signs of republican conditionality similar to those that the joint operations of the

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HRE were subject to in the 1660s when republican values were strong. Atalanta was originally limited to 12 months but subject to the prolongation of UNSC resolutions 1814 and 1816 (2008) (EU 2008a §16: 3). Since piracy continued to threaten shipping and the transports of the WFP the European Council European Council decided in December 2009 to prolong the operation for another year (EU 2009).

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6 Republican Commonwealths versus State-Building

6.1 Leviathan’s travels I have argued throughout this book that the state as the dominant paradigm for ordering politics manifests itself in two ways: an analytical lens which makes it difficult to distinguish political organization beyond the state, particularly if said organizations control the means of force; and a normative-political programme, which explicitly states or tacitly implies, that the sovereign state is the optimal form of political organization. This paradigm causes problems for our understanding of the HRE, the USA and the EU. It also creates problems for how we perceive, understand and grapple with issues of political organization in the developing world. The most extreme difficulties of rule are coded by the state paradigm as “state failure” and the solution as “statebuilding.” The two complementary issues have become politics of considerable magnitude and now occupy centre stage in the security and development policies of most Western countries, international organizations and NGOs. External state-building operations have found it difficult to achieve durable order in several of the dire cases. Therefore, we must rethink the diagnosis as well as the remedy. The principal components of this book – resurrection of the republican tradition, making it empirically applicable through modern sociological theory and the comparative investigation of the three cases – impart three lessons for how we understand and attend to fractured societies in Africa and Asia. All three do not provide definite answers but produce different questions. The first lesson consists of a more nuanced diagnosis. Creating a new lens through which the building-blocks of political order can be conceptualized means that we do not have to understand the absence of a 164

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state as the lack of rule. The principal conceptual lesson of early modern republicanism is that political organization does not have to be equated with the sovereign state and authority with sovereignty. Although state failure is a correct diagnosis of some situations, it is not exhaustive. What we see is rather the failure of the state as a specific project of order, and that does not necessarily imply that no other forms of rule can succeed. The collapse of a certain configuration of rules, for example, those of the state, does not preclude other configurations of rules, other forms of rule, from emerging. An example is the nascent order in Somalia outlined below. The second lesson is that the new interpretations of the HRE, the USA and the EU presented in this book can cast new light, by means of analogy, on the situations in Afghanistan and Somalia and to some extent in Iraq. Analogies do not imply identity between the different cases, but similarity of function according to two formulae: “As A is to B, so C is to D” and “As A is in B, so C is in D.” In Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia we see the formation of territorial units or groups that desire security, liberty and autonomy from actors and systems outside the boundaries of the de jure state as well as from each other. The strategies of Afghan, Iraqi and Somali actors to avoid the state resemble the predicament in the three historical republics. To some extent the resistance to the centralized state is a counterpart to the threats of tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy. If we believe that the state is the only form of rule, then we are confined to working towards erecting unitary structures with monopolies of violence – the very factor feared by local actors. Solutions to this predicament of insecurity and distrust that are explicitly or implicitly indebted to the models initiated by Bodin and Hobbes assume that it is desirable, natural and indeed possible to join different social groups under the sway of a Leviathan through trustbuilding measures and peace conferences. However, state-building/formation projects are among the most important drivers of conflict in the cases surveyed in this chapter. On the other hand, the prospect of the countries breaking up into states-systems might be suboptimal as well as destabilizing. The substantial differences notwithstanding, the cases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are analogous to the three historical republics in the sense that both state and states-system are detrimental to security in the country itself and in the wider region. Hence an alternative that avoids both forms of rule is necessary, and here republicanism becomes helpful. Federalism has been proposed as a solution that satisfies demands for autonomy. However, it uses the historically unique experience of

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the formation of the United States as its model. In Afghanistan and Somalia, decades of warfare have created a situation of distrust without parallel in the experience of the American founding but with considerable parallels to the situation of the Holy Roman Empire after the Thirty Years’ War and in Europe after the Second World War. The third lesson is that instead of pursuing modified versions of the state, the inverse solution could be attempted: the creation of republican commonwealths. These forms of rule would not have to be fully-fledged compound republics but entities where the units retain authority over limited capabilities for armed force and enjoy joint rule in other areas. Naturally, common institutions would restrain authority and their scope of action. A limited range of foreign relations would be possible, even necessary for the units. These would have to be conditional, for example disallowing military alliances that exclude the other units of the commonwealth. A possibility is to embed all units in a comprehensive alliance with one or more external partners. Abandoning state-building for another form of rule has its challenges, for example contesting the vested interests that some actors – often anointed by the international community – have in the project of the state. Another is finding external sources of stability that can balance the tension between autonomy and mutual ties by guaranteeing the constitution. The rest of this chapter outlines lessons two and three with particular focus on the Somali case. Of the three contemporary cases studied in this chapter, Somalia is the most promising, or conversely, most in need of a republican solution. Afghanistan faces different and in some respects worse challenges because of the erosion of larger territorial units of rule. Iraq has another history of statehood and developed institutions of governance. Its territorial division into the northern Kurdish and southern Arab parts could necessitate a combination of compound republican and federal solutions. Before outlining these issues, a note on limitations is necessary. I do not seek to declare the state redundant everywhere. In many parts of the developing world, the state has been adapted to local conditions and has prospered since decolonization in the 1960s. This chapter focuses on the most fractured and conflict-ridden cases. Like the book as a whole, the chapter does not deal with the state in its entirety but the specific problems of security and warfare. Afghanistan and Somalia are still plagued by war and Iraq by terrorism. Successful counter-insurgency/ counter-terrorism and the construction of political order are partly distinct issues, and partly linked. To be successful, all warfare must be

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connected to feasible political aims (Clausewitz 1984). While this chapter does not offer advice on defeating the Taliban or the al-Shabab in the field, it seeks to open new prospects for political organization that might affect the strategic calculus of some, but not all, groups and make them more amenable to a political, not martial, solution.

6.2 The coup d’état of the state in contemporary security The state as an analytical lens and as a normative-political prescription have obscured fundamental dynamics in and denigrated the purposes of forms of rule in European history that cannot be reduced to state or system of state, like the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the most notable contemporary form of this kind, the European Union. In an analogous way these two sides of the concept of the state colour debates on state failure and state-building. For proponents as well as critics of state-building, the unitary state, often called “Western” or “Weberian” is the implicit or explicit frame of reference. My specific objection is not just that the Western experience forms the basis of and backdrop to our way of thinking about political order, but that only one specific Western historiography, that of the sovereign state, provides the template for thinking about and constructing order. One aspect is cognitive since the absence of the state tends to be associated with chaos and an inability to see alternative forms of rule emerging. Indeed, areas without working states are not devoid of governance. Instead, actors like clans, warlords and private corporations exercise similar functions by determining and enforcing rules (Clunan and Trinkunas 2010: 19). Very few, if any, areas are ever without rule, hence the association between state failure and absence of order is misleading. State-building as a strategy for security and development has been criticized for being a technocratic exercise in social engineering that simplifies complex relationships and avoids fundamental political issues, conflicts and Western responsibility (Chandler 2006). The problem of fractured states is often presented as a lack of capabilities and/ or institutions (Ghani and Lockhart 2008). In response, a fully-fledged state presents a blueprint resembling an organizational chart of necessary functions that need to be implemented. Jones (2010: 547–553) distinguishes between two perspectives on state-building: neo-liberal institutionalists who emphasize that solving the problem of administrative capacity-building will pave the way for good governance and market rationality, and neo-Weberians who stress the need to reinforce

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the coercive capabilities of a fractured state in order for it to subdue its opponents. Both sides suffer from an oversimplified conception of the state and in particular of the centrality of violence to politics. The former view largely ignores the problems of violence, ambition and insecurity. The latter is highly attuned to these issues but it has internalized a conception of the state closely aligned to the Hobbesian project described in Chapter 2. Even writers that have voiced a more fundamental and structural critique of state-building and the concept of state failure have so far been oriented by the sovereign state. This group (see, for example, Herbst 2000, Jackson 1990, Egnell and Haldén 2009, Haldén 2010) claims that in many of the most fractured countries, very little in the way of modern unitary states has ever existed and that deep-seated structural factors mitigate against their construction. Hence the focus of this research is the conditions facilitating or mitigating against a particular form of rule, the unitary state. This focus can be explained partly as a reply to the state-building literature. Thus, the sovereign state remains the guiding concept for critics of state-building, who usually conclude by pointing to the absence of unitary states even after expensive and comprehensive interventions rather than analysing the actual order constructed by the intervention (Hameiri 2010: 3). A problem with the limitations imposed by the state as the only implicit or explicit point of reference for political organization is that the operational or structural failures of state-building may lead to resignation or to extreme suggestions like letting conflicts run their course in the hope of a stable state eventually emerging (Rear 2008). This book shows that we do not have to choose between the state and absence of order. When we try do orient ourselves in the present, we often use history as our implicit or explicit guide. State-formation in European history has been used by sociologists from Barrington Moore to Charles Tilly and Mohammed Ayoob as a tool to understand conditions of endogenous or exogenous state-building in today’s Third World (Rear 2008). The comparisons serve to illustrate similarities as well as differences and most observers agree that today’s countries cannot replicate European early modern paths to the state. Historical comparisons and contrasts are important but this book contends that the range of historical cases has been too limited in this regard. Rather than having the histories of England, France or, say, Denmark and Sweden as implicit or explicit points of reference, useful analogies can be drawn between contemporary countries and historical compound republics.

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I agree that programmes of state-building often disregard fundamental political problems. The root cause of this predicament is that the paradigm of state-building rests on forgetting the history of the state and its alternatives. The formation of the European state was a conflictridden process, and the Hobbesian idea of a unitary state producing security by subjugating all other rival centres of power was originally considered as a bizarre advocacy of tyranny (e.g. Leibniz 1988 [1677]: 119–120). To put another perspective on state-building and suggest alternative ways of constructing order, we must apply the early modern republican critique of and alternatives to the Hobbesian conception of the state. We must also apply the insights from the episodes of European history that are not part of the history of state-formation, but rather of compound republics.

6.3 Republican security analysis and historical analogies I will now discuss analogies between the historical forms of rule analysed in this book, the HRE, the USA and the EU, and the security situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Analogies are drawn along three dimensions central to the republican security analysis outlined in Chapter 2: the configuration of autonomous units, the resemblance to republican threats and a bellicose past. The purpose of these analogies is to investigate the potential for solutions resembling the ideal type of the compound republic. A plurality of autonomous units Compound republics consist of distinct groups or territorial units. In countries that lack cohesive social units capable of formulating and following rules and instead are characterized by atrophy of organizations and indeed organizing capacity, this solution is unlikely to be possible. For example, situations of weak “interaction capacity” (Buzan and Little 2000: 80) pertain in Sierra Leone and Liberia, where power is exercised in rapidly shifting and effervescent networks temporarily structured around “big men” (Egnell and Haldén 2009: 44–45). We can also see tendencies of similar weakness in organizational capacity in Afghanistan (Giustozzi 2009). While republicanism is an alternative to the state and the states-system, it is no substitute for organizational capacity and in itself no producer of durable organizations. However, we can draw analogies between the territorial shape of political order in our three historical cases and in Somalia and Iraq but

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to a lesser extent in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan and Somalia, the failure to establish strong states is undeniable, as is the transitory nature of the projects to establish states. Somalia, for many the quintessential failed state, in fact consists of a plurality of territorial units. The northwest is dominated by the self- declared, but not internationally recognized, state of Somaliland. In the north- east, the autonomous republic of Puntland holds sway. While Somaliland is set on sovereign statehood (Bradbury, Abokor and Yusuf 2003, Huliaras 2002), the leadership of Puntland has pursued ambiguous policies, alternating between trying to control the internationally recognized government and opting for self-rule in Puntland but not declaring independence (Brons 2001: 267). The south of the country remains fragmented, much of it controlled by the amorphous Islamist al- Shabab. Most of the fighting takes place in and around Mogadishu, but local projects for order have sprung up, characterized by Menkhaus (2006/2007: 86) as “a loose constellation of commercial city-states and villages separated by long stretches of pastoral statelessness.” This order appeared around 1995 after the high-intensity fighting of the early 1990s receded (Menkhaus 2003: 410). As elites turned to other forms of economic accumulation, rather based on non-violent business, the profitability of violence receded. The business class in southern Somalia benefits from an ordered state of affairs that controls criminality and ensures predictability. However, this does not necessarily require a state, neither of the wide and deep kind prevalent in Western modernity nor (and particularly not) of an exploitative predatory type more common in Africa after decolonization. In these areas the coercive maintenance of order is exercised by “private” militias and buttressed by customary law. Afghanistan today does not display the same kind of territorial configuration of rule that Somalia does. Before the Taliban conquered the country in 1997, a nascent system of several units had become established. In the early 1990s Afghanistan had become divided into a set of regions ruled by distinct groups or the organizations of individual warlords: Ismail Khan ruled Heart and the west, Dostum and his allies ruled the north, Masud Kabul and the north- east, the Nangahar Shura the east, and the south- east was divided between Jalaludin Haqqani and Mulla Naqibullah Akhund (Barfield 2010: 252–253). Except for the Pashtun south, these areas were administratively distinct and with relatively coherent structures. No leader attempted full-blown secession, no- one demonstrated willingness to submit to his rivals and none had the strength to defeat the other lords and unify the

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country (Barfield 2010: 255). This de facto partition (Rashid 1994: 219) of Afghanistan did not produce a durable form of rule. In 1994 the Taliban began conquering territory from their base in Khandahar and within three years they had occupied most of the country except the north- east. For the first five years after the American invasion of Afghanistan, US and NATO forces focused on defeating al- Qaeda and the Taliban regime with a relatively light military presence. From 2007 the military effort to defeat the insurgents and state-building efforts, including the training of the Afghan army, have been increased (Suhrke 2008). Although many rural warlords quickly coopted themselves into the state, the insurgency has grown in strength. There are serious doubts about the capacity of the Afghan government not only to defend itself but to govern the country. The Karzai regime is riddled with corruption and has committed electoral fraud which has seriously damaged its legitimacy (ICG 2009b). The USA and other NATO countries are negotiating with Taliban groups, trying to win over moderates. The current insurgency cannot be treated lightly in any way, but Afghanistan faces problems of political organization beyond it. President Karzai has followed patterns of patrimonial leadership which may have undermined the attempts to build an institutionalized system of rule. Indeed the process of institutionalizing rule seems to be crumbling as of 2009 (Giustozzi 2009: 300). A more fundamental question than whether radical Taliban can be defeated and moderates brought onside is whether the actors who are now not actively opposing or currently aligned with the state project will remain committed in the future. With Western forces protecting all groups against each other, Afghan actors may be inclined to forego seeking separatist solutions to their security. But without external protectors, things may change (Sinno 2008: 271–278). The country is not divided into territorially discrete units, but there are distinct networks of patronage centring on powerful charismatic leaders. These networks align with ethnic divisions, although ethnicity does not correspond to political organization (Crews and Tarzi 2008: 23–24). For example, the Afghan army is divided into four main factions each led by a strongman (ICG 2010: 11). Hence, there are a number of autonomous actors with substantial followers and local power bases. Unlike Somaliland and Puntland, they have had difficulties building local institutional frameworks that transcend their charismatic and patrimonial leaders. The political situation in both Afghanistan and Somalia is transitory and very difficult to predict. However, at present it seems doubtful that central institutions can be efficient, command loyalty and provide

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security. Instead, we must seek out the entities that can do these things, which entails identifying and bolstering forms of rule on local levels. A core feature of republican political theory is that authority is divisible, not indivisible as in the case of sovereignty. This means that shifting emphasis from the state does not mean encouraging state-formation on lower levels; instead authority over different functions would be divided, in a way analogous to Landeshoheit (Leibniz 1988[1677]: 115– 116]. All units of a territorial form of rule do not have to possess the authority over and capabilities for the same kind of functions. In order to outline how such a configuration would look, we must first consider why the state and states-system are so problematic in these areas. Republican security analysis: the state and the states-system as threats Contrary to many of the ideas underlying the state-building literature, works on historical state-formation stress the violent nature of stateformation, and indeed of the state as a driver of conflict (Rear 2008: vii). Rather than being a driver of peace and stability, the project of establishing a state fuels conflicts as important social groups and actors try to resist. A key question is how to interpret this resistance. In many cases the reasons for opposing the state will be varied and motives will be intertwined: ideological aversion to the specific form of the state, a desire for power and influence or, in fact, fear. A potentially destabilizing question for the idea of state-building is whether the groups resisting the state project, the so-called “spoilers,” have legitimate concerns for their security that must be taken seriously in the design of political order. How pressing this question is varies with the degree and causes of the absence of the state. In cases where the operations of a once functioning state have broken down and rival actors are evidently parasitic and profit from the absence of law and regularity, it may be more adequate to designate them as foes to be defeated. In cases where rival groups have alternative visions of order (loosely defined as regular operations of rule), their presence might point to deeper problems than a lack of capabilities and the prevalence of avarice. Indeed, there is a case to be made that some local actors see the Weberian, or rather Hobbesian, state as a potential tyrant rather than a pacifier. In Somalia the state has always had the character of a predatory project at the service of a dominant group, which means that there is a deep distrust of the state as a form of rule. Since 1991, a plethora of peace plans, conferences and state-building projects has been launched by neighbouring countries and the international community, resulting

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in a series of paper governments, externally recognized and supported but with miniscule power. Each successive government has been suspected of pursuing the interests of a certain clan (mostly Hawiye or Darod) or a group, to the detriment of other groups. Attempts to create a state seem to be one of the strongest drivers of conflict (Menkhaus 2003: 408). A great deal of violence is generated by projects to capture the state or by counter-projects to resist the establishment of a state, either by groups who fear that they would be left outside its exploitative system (e.g., rival clans) or by groups who oppose any state since they are not interested in being either outside or inside an exploitative state (e.g., the business community). The persistence of risk-averse strategies suggests a lack of will and capacity to destroy opposing groups (Haldén 2008). Also, the established and relatively solidified territorial units like Somaliland and Puntland are likely to forcefully resist any attempts to incorporate them in a centralized state. In sum, most actors in Somali politics are interested in order – understood as a relatively low intensity of fighting, lower risks and greater predictability. The unitary state, however, is seen as a threat to these aims rather than a furtherance of it. In Afghanistan similar mechanisms exist, where unwillingness or opposition to modern statehood is in many ways a rational strategy since it erodes the power base of the warlords (Giustozzi 2009: 299). In Iraq the problem is not so much resistance to the state per se as the aversion of the Kurdish minority to incorporation in an Arab state (ICG 2009a). A core feature of a compound republic is that actual projects or the theoretical prospect of the formation of a single unitary state is a threat that is to be avoided. In the HRE the formation of a unitary state covering the entire Empire was a driver of substantial armed conflicts, not least of which was the Thirty Years’ War. Somalia in particular resembles the historical situations in which a compound republic was the only and even necessary form of rule/order. Attempts to conquer the entire territory of the Republic of Somalia under a single centre will lead to armed opposition from several different actors as it has done in the past. We are used to looking at the state retrospectively, through Hobbes’ own eyes, as it were, and regard the Leviathan as a way of assuaging fears and ending the bellicose and dangerous “state of nature.” However, once we go beyond the failed state perception of Somalia and see the proliferation of forms of social and political order, another diagnosis is possible. As Montesquieu and Leibniz observed, the Hobbesian analysis is flawed. In the absence of a supreme authority, chaos does not reign;

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instead, other social organizations take its place and we must inquire what their political agendas are. “State-building” assumes that they will regard the state as we do, through Hobbesian or Lockean eyes, and see it as a just Leviathan or a peaceful contract. However after thirty years of war in Afghanistan or twenty in Somalia, their experience of the project of the sovereign state is likely to be closer to Polybius’ (1979: 308) description of how people saw classical tyrants: with “hatred and jealousy.” The opposite solution within the framework of the state–system of state spectrum, creating a number of independent states, sovereign de jure and perhaps also de facto, is beset with a number of problems. It might create permissive conditions for a bellicose states-system among the new entities, it might draw regional powers into the sub-system, seeking allies and influence, and it might lead to a deficit in governing capacity as the new entities might be too small and weak. It would also be highly controversial on a global level because of the resistance to secession and the formation of new states after decolonization and it might cause considerable alarm in otherwise functioning states with minority issues. Hence, in some countries we face a situation where the state is a driver of conflict and a hypothetical states-system might be a driver of even worse conflicts. The security situations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, where neither a state nor a system of state would be desirable or stable, provides an analogy to the situations in which the HRE, the USA and the EU found themselves in 1648, 1776 and 1951 respectively. It must be pointed out that the analogy pertains specifically to this predicament; in many other respects the two sets of cases and their contexts are highly different. The group of contemporary countries is also heterogeneous, in particular with respect to the level of historical stateness. Iraq has a history of a much stronger and wider state than do Afghanistan and Somalia, and it is a far more developed country regarding economy, infrastructure, education and so on. Obstacles to federalism Federalism is often advanced as a solution for many fractured countries with a history of violence. Its combination of a central government and regional autonomy raises hopes of being a solution that satisfies several demands: it forestalls secession and the creation of new states and offers self-government to populations that are or have been discontented with the policies of the central government in the past. Federalism, however, is often defined in too general terms and important preconditions are

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overlooked: most federations (for example, the USA, modern Germany, Argentina, Ethiopia) were internally pacified at the time of their creation and did not suffer from the acute lack of trust that many failed (or post-failed) states suffer from. Historically as well as constitutionally, most if not all federations are akin to unitary states with respect to the functions that are central to security. The most important of these are the means of violence and the possibility of seeking external allies in worst case scenarios. Very few durable federations have been formed out of pre- existing entities that either de jure or de facto resembled states in their own right. The comparison between the United States, the Holy Roman Empire and the European Union demonstrated that federalism is possible only under certain conditions. Federalism in the USA was possible since identities and networks of elite relations had not solidified in territorial forms or in strong and mutually exclusive groups. The relative weakness of threat perceptions between the states of America compared to the estates of the HRE and the European states in 1945 was also a significant enabling factor. Without it, it is doubtful that the states would have agreed to cede the ability to make alliances with foreign powers and among themselves to the federal government and settled with weaker militia forces for their own protection. In the two cases where war preceded the formation of union (the HRE and the EU), federation in the sense of relinquishing relations with external systems and the means of defence was not possible. On the basis of the comparison between the three cases it is doubtful that federalism can be a durable solution that satisfies all parties’ demands for security in contemporary cases where strong identities and networks have assumed territorial shape. Instead a republican territorially based order with a credible military balance must be created. Proposals that federalism could be a viable strategy to create order usually entail that “domestic issues” are handled by the regions, leaving the high end aspects of sovereignty like defence and foreign policy to the central government (see, for example, al-Rubaie Mowaffak 2008). The idea of federalism as an alternative to “state-building” draws on the view that federations are essentially different from unitary states. In relation to some policy areas they are, but as Chapter 1 argued, in relation to the means of violence they are equivalent. Behind the idea that federalism of this kind can solve the problems of order and security in severely fractured countries like Iraq or Somalia lies the implicit assumption that the experience of the United States can be universalized. In a pacified country with substantial differences over policy

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issues federalism may be an effective and attractive solution. In a country where territorially demarcated units or groups distrust each other, domestic policies are not the core of the problem; defence and foreign policy are. The problems facing countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are not primarily those of policy preferences but fundamental security problems. In the United States, before as well as after the Civil War, the liberty of the states has been understood as autonomy over domestic, “low policy” issues. Ceding the right to make alliances and the means of violence was problematic to some of the critics of the federal constitution in the 1780s (Edling 2003) but largely accepted thereafter. In contrast, domestic issues were less problematic to share for the members of the HRE and the EU, while the right to conduct foreign and security policies was considered an inviolable part of their liberty, precisely because of the history of warfare. The solution in the HRE and in the EU could be regarded as an inverted federalism. All members of these compound republics retained the means of force but shared other institutions. Although they had/ have what we are used to regarding as the trappings of sovereignty, the overall configuration of institutions restrained their freedom to use them (i.e. their “positive freedom”) which created entirely different configurations than in a system of sovereign states. It is contrary to our established habits of thinking that a country could share (some but not all) institutions and policy channels for “low policy” issues but retain capabilities for foreign policy and defence, but that is how the European Union began and this kind of arrangement (admittedly simplified) characterized the Holy Roman Empire throughout its centuries of existence. As will be discussed below, the capacities for defence and foreign policy in these cases cannot be limitless, but certain restrictions in the form of constitutional-political rights and duties and in terms of institutional and military capabilities will probably have to be imposed. Some countries might have to be ordered in combinations of federalism and territorial republican restraint. For example, in Iraq, the Sunni and Shia groups have not formed cohesive territorial units and hence a federal solution with restraints on government like a formal division of power might be viable. To the north, however, the Kurds have formed such a proto-state with strong communal bonds. Given the history of conflict and persecution it is difficult to imagine the Kurds accepting a federal solution that deprives them of the right and means of collective self- defence (Galbraith 2005). In Afghanistan, a similar situation is conceivable with federalism in the north with republican connections to a separate system in the south, which is the most critical area.

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Somalia, as we have seen, is characterized by the territorialization of politics to an even greater extent. Hence, a federalism that gives domestic powers to regional governments but places the capacities for organized armed coercion in the hands of a central government is unlikely to gain acceptance from the major parties.

6.4 Republican commonwealths A central concern of republican theorists is “how to deploy power to balance power” (Montesquieu, cited in van Gelderen and Skinner 2002: 3). To address how this could be done in contemporary cases, a major difference between the three historical republics covered in this book and contemporary candidates for republican formations must be discussed. The HRE, the USA and the EU were, by the standards of their age, highly developed areas, institutionally and economically. This meant a greater degree of interdependence between the members of the republics. Interdependence provided an incentive to be embedded in a common framework of rules. All three forms of rule were broadly developed societies and, unlike premodern societies, characterized by differentiations into functional systems like economy, law and governance (Luhmann 1997: 743–776). The interdependence and possibility of synergy effects across functional subsystems also enabled the units to be bound together in a common framework of institutions. This insight yields an important lesson for contemporary organizations. The less developed, in an economical sense and in the sense of functional differentiation, a society is, the more difficult will it be to bind units together. Hence, development must be an integral part of the building of commonwealths. Foreign investment, trade and aid can also serve as powerful levers to secure acceptance for a political solution. However, institutional development can be substantially facilitated if the principal political actors do not fear for their lives or liberty. The form of rule that the Western international community is trying to build in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) combines the construction of a differentiated society and institutions that regulate it with sovereignty, a single indivisible conception of authority and a legitimated claim to a monopoly of violence – and hence the power to determine security and insecurity. Fundamental problems arise when significant groups in the population cannot trust that the state will remain neutral and not the tool of aggrandizement for a particular group and the oppression of the others. If groups are forced to choose between, on the one hand, development of a modern society and handing over their defensive

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capabilities to an unreliable and partial state, and on the other, a lack of development but retaining the means of self- defence, rejecting a modern society and retaining the means of self- defence might be a rational choice. In contrast, republican arrangement does not force local actors into this choice. Allowing organized groups to retain some capabilities for armed force, but sharing other functions of the state, could solve this dilemma. The larger and more well- organized the groups, the more viable would a republican solution be. For example the different parts of Iraq and possibly parts of Somalia (certainly Somaliland and Puntland) could be considered viable units. In Afghanistan the problems of fragmentation of units, atrophy of institutions and patrimonialism paints a more pessimistic picture. Republican commonwealths project an alternative path to development; by creating security, local actors could be left to work out the extent and character of integration between the units for themselves. The combination of centralization and autonomy is likely not to resemble the configuration dominant in the West. Building republican commonwealths means abandoning the idea that the state is a natural form of order regardless of time and space. Considering the compound republic of the European Union and the republican antebellum United States it may be a less alien notion than it seems at first sight. They do not have to be commonwealths of states, like the EU, but could be composed of different kinds of polities within the confines of currently existing de jure states. Republican commonwealths in the Third World do not have to be openly declared or designated as such; what I am proposing is not necessarily new categories of international law but of international thought. A republican commonwealth might be able to stabilize a region of autonomous territorially bounded units, but how would we deal with the risk that the units might wage war on each other since they possess the means of force? The HRE, but to an even greater extent the EU, were stabilized by being embedded in external systems and through the active engagement of external actors. Regarding the contemporary cases, external actors have to ensure, by means of treaty and surveillance, that local actors primarily have defensive capabilities. For fullyfledged modern forces it is difficult to draw a straight line between offensive and defensive capabilities since most branches or even weapons platforms can be used to both ends. In the hypothetical case of a commonwealth model to stabilize a fractured country we would not be talking about armies with the full range of capacities. For example, air forces would be out of the question and so would armour, heavy

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artillery and long-range missile systems. Another way is to assist in the defence of the units. Aerial surveillance, either with planes or drones, would be able to detect troop movements, even if these take unconventional forms. Monitoring functions on the ground would also be necessary. Even clandestine preparations for large-scale armed action can be detected. The fact that the preparations for the Rwandan genocide in 1994, which was carried out by civilians armed with machetes, were observed, but not acted upon due to political reasons, indicates that even very unconventional kinds of mobilization can be detected. Retaining the members’ right to relations with systems in the environment would be a necessary component of republican commonwealth. These rights should, however, not be unconditional. Exclusive military alliances with foreign partners would most likely have to be disallowed. Similar arrangements characterized the foreign relations of the Federal Republic of Germany before it was restored to full sovereignty at unification in 1949. A possibility is to embed all units in a comprehensive alliance with one or more external partners. A precondition of the viability of this kind of arrangement, resembling the HRE and the EU, is the presence of a benign external protector. The argument that the members of a republic retain the means of force but that these capabilities have to be limited and restrained rests on the assumption that human motivation for conflict can be divided into fear and ambition. The contemporary cases lack neither fearful nor ambitious men. Retaining the means of violence is necessary to reassure the fearful and restraining it is necessary to curtail the ambitious. The political and strategic task of Western or other external forces would be to deter or at worst defeat the ambitious if avarice means infringing on the liberty of the other members of their republican commonwealth. This means surveillance, border patrol and maintaining limitations on arms and forces. A pressing question is whether a republican commonwealth could protect itself from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. Neither the state nor a republic as a form of rule can provide immunization against religious or political extremism. The causes of extremism and organized terrorism are too many and complex to review in full here. However, it is clear that movements like al- Qaeda and al-Shabaab were drawn to Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia partly because of sympathetic regimes, in the way that al- Qaeda was drawn to Sudan. Another factor which helped them to take root in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia was the prevalent disorder and recurrent fighting. If a republican form of rule could stabilize these countries and decrease the intensity of warfare

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then extremism might be robbed of a facilitating factor. Extremism and terrorism would have to be combated with ideological, economic and judicial tools and only exceptionally with military ones. In all aspects, fledgling republics – like several otherwise stable states around the globe – are likely to require the help of the Western powers in the future. An external protector or a group of external protectors is central to this arrangement. Neither Afghanistan nor Somalia lacks neighbours who would volunteer for this position. Ethiopia and Pakistan are the most eager suitors and they have pursued patronage politics towards local clients. The problem is that these powers have been drivers of conflict in Somalia as well as Afghanistan. Hence we have seen more of the divisive than the cohesive effects that an external power can produce. In contrast to France in relation to the HRE and the USA in relation to the EU, neither Pakistan nor Ethiopia identifies their security interests with a programme of order acceptable to all parties in Somalia and Afghanistan. Neither external power inspires trust among groups (except for their clients) in Somalia or Afghanistan. Unless neighbouring countries can become viable candidates for the role of an external protector, Western powers would have to retain some kind of presence to stabilize Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia if these were to be recast along republican lines. Comparisons and analogies between historical and contemporary cases have to be equipped with riders that specify crucial differences between the cases. The first rider is that the norm of statehood has created expectations that in some cases will be hard to yield but which may be negotiable in others. For elite groups, the state holds the promise of unbridled freedom of action, resources and prestige. In many cases, like Afghanistan, this promise will not be yielded lightly. In others, like Iraq or Somalia, the acceptance of a commonwealth model might be greater. The character of contemporary mass media and mass politics also entails the participation of more groups that would have to be included in an agreement. The second rider is that today, unlike in the historical cases, political violence is not only performed by large, well- ordered and identifiable units, but also by smaller units using smaller arms. Although it could make agreements harder to enforce, an external protector would have the technological advantage in monitoring the movements and activities of such groups. The third is the difficulty of finding external protectors that are trusted by all groups in the commonwealth. The political force of radical Islam, even Jihadism, in all three countries may hinder Western (i.e. US) presence. However, an arrangement that would

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make external presence seem less invasive might decrease the potential for radical mobilization. The fourth rider is that all forms of rule require normative concepts to make the configurations of formal institutions meaningful, convincing and morally appealing. A republican political philosophy, or the functional equivalents thereof, has to be constructed in order to stabilize and legitimize future republican commonwealths. External protectors are beneficial to balance a compound republic but internal institutions are also necessary. For example the HRE was united by discourses of political community that created loyalty towards “Emperor and Empire” through confidence in the legal system and the discourse of “German Liberty.” All three institutions combined to create a widespread acceptance that the system was just, a sense central to preventing the kind of warfare which modern IR theory would expect from a form of rule with many armed units. Functional equivalents of such communal institutions would have to be supported in order to sustain republican commonwealths in the developing world. A precondition of implementation in Afghanistan and Somalia would be a process of adaptation and assimilation of republicanism undertaken by the groups concerned rather than externally imposed. The search for functional equivalents of the institutions that made the HRE, the USA and the EU meaningful and just, will be among the most important aspects of creating viable forms of rule. The challenges are substantial and republican alternatives to state-building are under-researched. However, the bleak results of state-building in Afghanistan and Somalia necessitate a rethinking of the state. The considerable successes of the EU and the Atlantic system since 1949 make republican arrangements worth considering. This book has not dealt with the ethical side of republicanism (Viroli 1992), its notions of citizenship and public service. This specific chapter has not dealt with corruption, a major impediment to the creation of functioning and equitable order. Their meeting is but one example of the fruitfulness of further research on republicanism and political order outside Europe (see, for example, Barnett 2006).

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I have argued that it is necessary to circumvent the dominant position of the state in contemporary political thinking. The precise theoretical problem is the idea that the state is the best possible form of political organization and indeed the only possible one. A consequence of this mode of thinking, dominant in political, legal and historical thinking since the mid-1700s, is that all entities in world politics can be reduced to points along a spectrum ranging from “state” to “system of states.” I have not analysed the European Union (EU) through the analytical lens of the state and implicitly or explicitly compared it to ideal-typical or existing states – a procedure that tends to reproduce the state as a normative ideal, propagated since 1576. Instead I have constructed an analytical framework based on classical and early modern republican political theory and modern systems theory. In this interpretation, republican political theory has two aspects, one systems-theoretical which posits a political ontology that transcends the distinction between domestic and international, and one normative-political which provides a security analysis utterly different from the Hobbesian tradition. Both aspects allowed me to create an ideal type of rule, the compound republic. Consequently I compared the EU with two other variants of this ideal type, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (HRE) between 1648 and 1763 and the United States of America (USA) between 1776 and 1865. The strategy of creating an understanding of the EU that evaded the spectrum state-system of states resulted in five groups of theoretical and empirical advances. Firstly, it has produced an analytical framework that can be used to analyse different forms of rule that previously have either been misleadingly understood through the lens of the state, deemed too different for historical comparison or reduced to entities sui 182

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generis. They include empires, states, system of states, the different feudal forms of organization and compound republics. Secondly, it has yielded empirical insights into fields that hitherto have been largely ignored by IR theory. Thirdly, the aspects of republicanism used in this book, as a system theory, as a normative-political programme and as an ideal type of rule, demonstrate that a science of politics that does not take the state for granted is possible. Fourthly, a consequence of sidestepping the state as an analytical framework and as a normative-political ideal is that we are no longer limited to understanding fragmented countries like Afghanistan and Somalia as “failed states.” Similarly our ways of conceptualizing remedies are not restricted to “state-building.” Fifthly, the analytical strategies of this book have produced insights into the relationship between the social sciences in general, in particular IR, and historical studies. It has also outlined how they can enrich each other without methodological imperialism. This chapter summarizes the results of this book with regard to each group.

Comparing republics: the Holy Roman Empire, the United States and the European Union This book has used the heritage of republican political theory in two ways, as a systems theory of political life and as a normative-political security philosophy. It builds on the writings of Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, Machiavelli, Leibniz, Wolff, Montesqieu and James Madison. The systems theory does not divide the political world into domestic and international, internal and external or hierarchy and anarchy. Instead its political ontology views human society as a series of ascending corporations, each embedding and binding the others. Leibniz argued that political units can be combined into a single polity without losing their distinctiveness. This insight transcends the argument that Vatell made in the middle of the eighteenth century that all units are either sovereign (states) or part of another unit’s sovereignty (e.g. part of a state), a move that restricts the spectrum of forms in world politics to states or systems of states. Modern political science has adopted this distinction as foundational, which has resulted in the present problems of understanding entities that cannot be reduced to this spectrum, such asthe HRE, antebellum USA and the EU. In republican thought, units can be embedded in larger associations; they do not have to be integrated. This conception allows the substitution of a system/environment distinction, like the conception of world politics as states in an anarchic system, for a conception where world politics consists of a plurality of systems in each others’ environment.

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Republican security analysis proceeds from this ontology. In some situations in world history, entities have existed where a number of polities have been joined into a larger one. In such areas, threats to the liberty and survival of these polities have come from other members as well as from external sources. Projects to build a single state of the area have caused major wars, but retaining the area as a system of states has also been too dangerous as it entails a greater risk of war. Instead, a compound republic form that safeguards the liberty and security of all members by embedding them in common institutions and restraining their positive freedom of action has provided the most stable form of rule, given the circumstances. This book is based on a conception of politics in which the capacity for armed force is essential and foundational to all forms of rule. As previously noted, it does not mean that politics is about perpetual war, but it is a perpetual risk or possibility that underlies political action. The authority over and capacities for the means of force determine to a great extent the character of a form of rule and are central to its political purpose. All forms of rule can be analysed through the ways in which their institutions organize the following relations: 1) the identity of the members; 2) the relations of members to each other; 3) the relations of members to a centre; and 4) the relations of members and of the polity as a whole to systems and actors in the environment. All relations can be expressed in terms of rights and duties. Schematically put, the unitary state concentrates authority and capabilities in a single centre, subjugates internal rivals and organizes external defence. This is at the core of the political purpose of the unitary state. In contrast, the political purpose of the compound republic is to safeguard the liberty and material survival of its members. Consequently they retain the authority over and capabilities for armed force. Liberty in the republican tradition is understood as “freedom from” external coercion. In order to safeguard the liberty of each member, their capacity for autonomous action, i.e. “freedom to” act, must be curtailed and restrained by informal and formal institutions. This makes the polity a balancing act since the mechanisms of restraint cannot be so strong or extensive that they extinguish the liberty of the members. Managing this tension is central to compound republics. There are six kinds of threats to the political survival of a compound republic: 1–3 are drawn from republican political theory and 4–6 from the systems-theoretical framework. (1) Internal tyranny (2) Oligarchy

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(3) (4) (5) (6)

Anarchy External pressures Loss of legitimacy Non-legitimate exit options

To avoid that these threats arise and to safeguard liberty and autonomy of the units a number of implementation mechanisms exist in compound republics. These are: dispersing the authority and means of organized coercion; institutions that restrain the members and the central institutions; a balanced embeddedness; and consensual rules and norms. I argued that compound republics suffer from a problem in connection with concerted action since it often entails centralization or delegation in order to be effective. Thus, even if action can be necessary in order to thwart external threats or maintain the legitimacy of the polity (systemic threats) it can nevertheless trigger the republican threats. I called this deadlock the “strategic paradox.” The political survival of compound republics depends on management of the tension between liberty of the members and their autonomy. Chapter 2 argued that this balance is not always possible by internal means only and an external balancer may be necessary to perform this function. I developed an abstract model in which an external actor can act as a balancer of a compound republic. The strategic paradox can thereby be avoided and the internal tensions in the polity do not have to result in the overthrow of the republican constitution. I will now summarize the results of the comparison between the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), the United States of America (USA) and the European Union (EU). I will proceed according to the elements outlined above: main institutions; nature of the members; difference in character; history of warfare; history of community; views of the republican threats; members’ relation to the centre, to each other and their relation and that of the polity as a whole to systems in the environment. The three most important factors in the environment are: the presence or absence of an external protector, the presence or absence of external systems of action, and whether the republic has the capacity to exert constitutive control over systems in the environment. In all three cases, a certain institution had a disproportionately weighty constitutive effect in the regulation of all four factors: in the HRE, Landeshoheit, in the USA, federalism, and in the EU, sovereignty. The three institutions differed in character. American federalism instituted a system that embedded the states, while Landeshoheit and (EU) sovereignty are sets of rights and duties belonging to the members. All,

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however, created rules that prescribed what the members can, cannot and must do. Each institution constructed the members of the republic. In the HRE members were the immediate imperial estates, in the EU the member states. In the USA the situation was ambiguous since federalism signified that on the one hand states were members, on the other hand, individual citizens were. The functions of Landeshoheit and sovereignty are analogous cases since they both bestow the right of liberty (i.e. negative freedom) and agency on the members. Consequently both are ambiguous since they are firstly restraining institutions (in the former capacity) and secondly the institution that must be restrained (in the latter). As a system the EU gives sovereignty a different function than the international system does. This underscores my theoretical point that different forms of rule generate action constitutively in different ways. Despite the similarity of function, there are differences in the Landeshoheit in the HRE system and sovereignty in the EU system. First, while the former could be circumscribed by central institutions such as the courts, Diet and Emperor, the latter is more of an absolute right. In this respect sovereignty in the EU context is closer to Berlin’s (2002: 169–181) understanding of liberty. This aspect points to differences in the configuration of the members in the respective polities. Second, while the negative aspects of sovereignty (liberty) are stronger than the corresponding aspects of Landeshoheit, the positive aspects of the latter (agency) were stronger in the Empire. Third, the liberty of the member states in the EU is stronger vis-à-vis other member states than vis-à-vis the central institutions. American federalism represents another solution since it constructed a system of politics parallel to the system of American states. It nested the system of states by taking charge of their relations to external systems and limiting the purview of the states to internal affairs. Thereby it created a definition of liberty – and correspondingly of the republican threats – as pertaining to internal affairs rather than to the freedom of acting towards systems in the environment. The HRE and the EU are similar in respect to how the relations of the members to external factors are regulated. In both cases members were free to conduct their own foreign and security policies. This was (and is) an important part of the political purpose since it safeguards the liberty and material security of the members. An important difference was that in the Empire, this right was explicitly conditioned by the requirement that such policies were not directed against the polity (contained in the “Emperor and Empire” formula). Furthermore it was aimed at securing

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their liberty and the maintenance of the form of the Empire as laid down in the Peace of Westphalia. Explicitness of this kind is lacking in the EU, as is the idea that members have an obligation to uphold the constitution of the polity. The difficulty that both entities had/have in external acting is connected to the fact that a central part of the understanding of liberty of the members is autonomous agency in relation to external systems. Retaining the authority and the means of armed force was/is central to their liberty and security, which is why joint and centralized action is so problematic. In contrast to the American case, the history of war between the members of both HRE and the EU caused greater fears and mistrust and necessitated stronger safeguards for the liberty and security of the members. Lacking a history of internal war but from its inception having a history of wars against a common enemy, the American states could more readily accept ceding authority and capabilities over foreign relations and (large-scale) armed force. In Europe, more densely populated with autonomous units, relations with external systems was much more of a necessity than in the American case. Both polities were/are characterized by the need to avoid the “republican threats.” They also demonstrated that the principal formal institutions of both polities have the dual function of restraining the autonomous agency of the members and safeguarding their liberty. Connections to external systems in combination with the internal structure of both polities produced a number of factors with bearings on viability. American federalism created a system with different dynamics than in the HRE and EU, which created entirely different conditions for its viability and removed the weaknesses suffered by the HRE and the EU, which this book focuses on. Chapter 3 outlined the long-term consequences of structural conditions as well as of historical contingencies for the viability of the HRE. In the case of the EU we cannot yet see the consequences of factors that belong to recent history. But, as we can see analogies to the Empire in terms of system-to-system connections and internal structures, we can identify traits in the EU that may be detrimental as well as conducive to its viability. Detrimental traits are primarily those that both polities share and the ones conducive to survival are those where the EU differs. The relations of the members to the centre, to each other and to external systems were quite different in the HRE and the EU and these differences account in large measure for the differences in viability. One of the centres of the Empire, the office of the Emperor, was not independent as it was practically tied to the Habsburg dynasty between

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1438 and 1806. Hence the Hobbesian idea of a centre to which the members submit and transfer powers was one possible interpretation of the Empire and it constituted a powerful discourse that took the form of mobilizing loyalty to the Emperor. This trait destabilized the Empire as the partiality of the centre compromised it as a political system. Insecurity was also stronger as the threat of “internal tyranny” was stronger than in the EU. Finally, possession of the office of the Emperor gave the Habsburgs advantages in relation to other members, especially in connection with external actors and systems. This last point will be dealt with below. In contrast, the centre of the EU consists of the common institutions which are ruled by none (the Commission and the Courts) or jointly by all (the Council of Ministers and the European Council). Put schematically, while the members of the EU and the USA are equal, the relations between the members of the Empire were characterized by inequality originating in the hierarchical stratification between Electors, Princes, Circles and Cities. This unbalanced the Empire since it strengthened the opposition of interests of the materially stronger and more privileged members and the materially weaker members of lesser status. The balancing function of a compound republic requires equality of the members in terms of authority, something the Empire lacked. The formalized stratification strengthened the threat of oligarchy which thereby increased insecurity in the Empire. Most importantly, together with the privileged position of the Emperor, this trait created the preconditions of inequality in relation to external systems. The combination spelled the end of the Empire, first in the form of transformation, then in the form of corrosion of the system. Between 1679 and 1714 the Empire was exposed to a series of that actions I understood as coups d’état since they bypassed its constitution and undermined the republican form of rule. Due to the inequality in the Empire the Habsburgs and Brandenburg-Prussia were the only members of the Empire who were fully accepted in the European system of states, which enabled them to bypass the imperial constitution, which stipulated that the Emperor and Diet should conduct foreign policy jointly. The most significant examples occurred at the peace congresses of Nijmegen (1679), Ryswick (1689) and Utrecht/Rastatt (1713/14). They used the rules of the European system that gave monarchs precedence in international affairs. Both actors could pursue their own interests separately and in some cases at the expense of the common interests of the Empire. This unbalancing development led

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other estates to pursue royal titles with which they could “emerge” from the restraining institutions of the Imperial system. Through these actions another system based on monarchical precedence and raison d’état broke through and replaced the legalistic and polycentric order of the Empire. The Empire as a form of rule thus began to change from a compound republic to a confederal structure. The HRE did not cease to exist as a political system, but its form changed. As the political purpose of the Empire as a restraining compound republic was destroyed, more and more estates lost their liberty. As a consequence the conditions of material survival worsened as an increasing number of estates were assimilated into larger ones. Hence the political survival of the compound republic form of rule was a precondition of the material survival of its members. The stratification within the Empire contrasts with the formal equality of all EU members. The institutions of the EU aim to even out unequal power relations between the member states, This balances the polity and lessens the threat of oligarchy. Equality is also an important strength in relation to the Atlantic system and to NATO. Naturally, it is a liability in relation to collective action, but an asset in relation to maintaining the polity as a compound republic. Several factors can enable a similar bypassing of the EU system: (a) The Atlantic system. It shares traits with the EU system that can lead members to perceive the latter as redundant and the former sufficient to their material survival. (b) The key position of the United States in the global system, especially towards European actors, which enables “divide and rule” strategies. (c) In the sense of being full members of the UN all members are equal. However, Britain and France are privileged by having permanent seats on the Security Council. Our three cases differ with regard to the relative strength of conceptions of community. The HRE and the USA were both characterized by strong notions of cultural, political and affective communities (not necessarily national), which today’s European Union is not. In Tönnies’ (1935) classical terms, the HRE and the USA had stronger traits of Gemeinschaft, whereas the EU is more of a Gesellschaft arrangement. Viroli points out that a sense of loyalty to the common, to the republic and to its rules, is beneficial or perhaps even necessary to its maintenance. He also states that too much patriotism can be a dangerous thing for the republican

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form of rule as it creates an impetus for too much unity which would threaten the republic (1992: 290). Viroli expresses his distrust of “patriotism” in another way than I do; he sees it primarily as a threat to exclude some citizens, not to transform the republican polity into a unitary one. Chapter 3 demonstrated the strong patriotic discourses in the Empire which mobilized considerable resources for the wars against France and the Ottomans (Wrede 2005: 100, 102). Solidarist discourse had connotations of obedience, loyalty and obligation. In general the Empire was characterized by a greater emphasis on duties than the EU which is characterized by a more unilateral emphasis on the rights of the members. This fact was an asset of the Empire when it came to defence against an external threat which could have threatened its material survival. In relation to maintaining a republican form of rule, it proved to be a liability since it lessened well-founded suspicions of centralization and delegation of authority. Hence the Gemeinschaft protected the Empire as a system but not as a republic. It did so in combination with the stronger position of the centre and greater autonomous agency of the stronger members. The former was evident in the defence against the Turks in 1683 and the latter in the “directorate” of large estates that defended the Empire against the French in 1688. Since the War of Independence (1776–1783) the USA has been constructed as a community with a common destiny and a political mission. This construction was a considerable enabling factor in producing the necessary impetus and trust to secure acceptance of the federal constitution. It was thus an asset to the viability of the USA. On the contrary, the EU is facing the opposite problem to the HRE; lacking common solidarity to sustain common efforts and sacrifices it evades the threat of “tyranny” but its collective agency remains weak. Hence it remains strong as a republic but weak as a political system. The problem is that a system without the means to mobilize solidarity and to act may find it hard to maintain the case for its republican form. In such a scenario, I believe the danger for the EU is not so much an impetus for centralization but a gradual abandonment of the common. This, however, lies outside the scope of this thesis to determine. In the HRE as well as in the EU there was/is a structural need to avoid conflicts in order to retain the internal order. The tendency to actually do so was less pronounced in the Empire which led to negative consequences for the stability of the political system, whereas it is a pronounced trait of the EU. As noted above, this trait meant greater possibilities of collective action for the Empire, a count on which the EU is weak. The

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explanation for this difference can be sought in the structure of each republic, in turn a result of their respective historical origins. In the EU the fear of “anarchy,” that is, internal conflicts and disunity which in a long-term perspective can lead to war, is considerably greater than it was in the Empire. This difference explains in large part the differences in the patterns of collective action. As opposed to the Empire in 1648, the EC/EU lacked an earlier history of community and unity that could facilitate or motivate cooperation. In the Empire, as I have shown above, community was taken for granted in a way that it was – and still is – not in the EC/EU. Hence the common project was much more fragile and thus the need for avoidance of conflict was – and remains – greater. Consequently the striving to avoid internal conflict is a stronger inherent trait of the EU. In other words, the political purpose of the EU is more markedly to avoid anarchy, whereas the Empire also had other purposes. These were not only the stronger emphasis on avoiding tyranny and oligarchy but also retention of the hierarchical structure of the system. Over time the purpose of the EU, the avoidance of conflict, has become taken for granted and forgotten. Only by making the importance of the taken-for-grantedness of this purpose explicit can we understand why the EU is willing to repeatedly sacrifice action in favour of stability, apparently at a high price. All forms of rule require normative concepts to make the configurations of formal institutions meaningful, convincing and morally appealing. The possession, acceptance and internalization of such a political philosophy that gave meaning to the setup of rights and duties were significant sources of strength in the USA and the HRE. The lack thereof is a weakness, perhaps a liability, in the EU. Alone among the republics covered by this book, the USA lacked an external protector. Its strategic depth made this function less necessary than it was for the HRE and is for the EU. The principal reason was, however, that federalism insulated the American states from systems in their environment and made this function unnecessary. The Empire lacked a durable external protector who identified its interests and security with the maintenance of the Empire as a system and as a republic. During the time of Richelieu, Mazarin and the early reign of Louis XIV, France played such a role and I have shown that it strengthened the republican status of the Empire. In contrast the EC/EU has had a durable and benign protector in the United States. For a long while it has identified both its security and normative interests with the European integration project, a Europe united and free being a valuable

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ally against the Soviet Union; and it was seen as the just way to organize politics in (Western) Europe. The one precondition has been that Europe does not distance itself from the “Atlantic” system and turn into a rival more than an ally. In theoretical terms, that it remains more of a sub-system than a separate system. The future is always unpredictable and indeterminate but the politics of recent administrations suggest that the security and normative identification of the USA with the (republican) European integration project may be waning. The interest in avoiding a separate European system seems, however, to be alive. A close association with NATO and the United States is in the security interests of many European countries. Hence, allowing them and the EU as a whole to have that association is in the interest of the EU as it preserves stability on the continent and precludes another division of it, this time along other lines. The EU has another advantage that the Empire lacked, namely an external system of action that could stabilize it. The main factor in this equation is the EU’s nestedness in the Atlantic system. It creates a different relationship between the EU as a variant of the compound republic and the United States as an external hegemon from that which the HRE had with France as an external hegemon. To understand the role that the USA plays in relation to the EU it is essential to understand the ambiguity of its interests. It is interested in preserving the EU as a balanced form of rule but also in seeing that it does not separate itself too much from the Atlantic system. This ambiguity affects the EU in the following way. On the one hand, if the EU does not manage to uphold its systemic integrity towards the Atlantic system then it remains vulnerable as a political system. The reason is that some members may perceive the Atlantic system as an adequate security provider if the EU cannot justify its purpose. In such a scenario, the EU may be gradually abandoned by its members. On the other hand, if the EU develops in too autonomous a way then smaller members may perceive themselves as exposed to the threat of oligarchy by the more powerful ones as well as to external pressures. Consequently, US engagement with European actors presents the EU with something of a dilemma. Engagement through the Atlantic system (NATO) may threaten to erode the EU as a system. Engagement with European actors without NATO likewise threatens to divide the EU into those that side with the USA and those that do not. Conversely, US withdrawal or attempts to decouple the EU from the Atlantic system threatens to activate two threats (or the perception of them, which may be equally disruptive) to the compound republic: oligarchy and external

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pressures. The aims of surviving as a system and surviving as a compound republic are thus in latent conflict in the EU. For these reasons I believe that a close coupling with the Atlantic system is necessary but not sufficient for the survival of the EU as a form of rule. The Atlantic system, which acts to stabilize the EU, is therefore also necessary, but probably not sufficient, for the material safety of the member states. The ability to influence neighbouring systems, territorial as well as practice-based, in a constitutive fashion is a necessary factor for political survival. This is one of the EU’s strengths and it has been expressed in the processes of accession and enlargement. It changed the political order in central Europe and enabled the expansion of the EU to encompass new territory. Relations with the actors in the region could hence be managed according to the institutions of the EU system instead of being mediated through those of the international system. Acting externally as a cohesive actor is difficult for the EU due to the strategic paradox and the need to avoid internal conflicts. This was shown by its difficulties in handling the crises in Yugoslavia. Hence the solution was to exercise control over the region as a first stage and to co- opt it into the EU’s form of rule as a second. The example of the Western Balkans shows that the EU is able to affect the constitutive framework of neighbouring territorial systems. The Empire, by contrast, lacked a similar ability to control systems in its environment either by means of expansion or by constitutively affecting them. Instead, the Empire was constitutively influenced by events and institutions in the European system of states. Since the Empire could not expand as a political system, gains made by individual members augmented their power and enabled them to emerge from the restraining institutions of the imperial system. Compound republics offer viable alternatives to the two other major solutions to the problem of order, systems of states and unitary states. They constitute a more stable framework than the former since conflicts are reduced in frequency and in intensity. They also have possibilities of extension other than states and empires. Without conquest and subjugation they may control a larger number of actors. Furthermore, they do not entail some of the problems of internal order that states and empires suffer from, at least not in a formative stage. Compound republics have structural traits that are beneficial to the material survival of the units and enable a common system. Hypothetically we may ask whether another form of organized coexistence would have been possible in the Holy Roman Empire after 1648 and Western Europe after 1945. This question is based on the

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independence of the many centres of authority and their strivings to retain it. In both cases coexistence was enabled by the special combination of liberty and ties that the ideal type represents. From this proposition we may extrapolate forwards and inquire whether peaceful coexistence between the European states is possible in any other form than this one. If this is not the case then a transformation of the EU from the compound republic form of rule might make organized coexistence more difficult among the multitude of territorial centres of authority that is Europe. Without this coexistence the material survival of the units would once again be precarious. The above factors generate conclusions concerning the viability of compound republics in general. In order for a republican system to function there needs to be a balance between forces and fractions that ensures the regular functioning of the constitutional system. Disruptions of this balance will open up the possibility of creating exceptions according to the needs of the raison d’état (Schmitt 1985: 5). Several authors have pointed out the distinction between the legal and political as the defining difference between the imperial and the European states-system. I believe that this distinction can also be seen as one between the regular and the exceptional, between a system that seeks to rule out the exception and one in which the exception is the rule. All socio-political systems are sensitive to and dependent upon events in neighbouring systems. This trait is especially salient in the case of compound republics due to (1) their principal openness; (2) the tension between autonomy and ties in the system and (3) the number of actors that need to be taken into account. Thereby their viability depends on the existence of an external balancer and on the ability to influence or at least resist influence from external systems. The EU’s strength is a combination of all three traits: an external balancer in the form of the United States, the ability to influence systems in its environment and that it is to a certain extent stabilized by an external system, the “Atlantic.” I do not mean to say that stability or viability is therefore automatic or secured for this system. Rather it demands considerable skill, insight and certainly knowledge about the connections between internal dynamics and external factors.

Republican policies for the twenty-first century Resurrection of the republican tradition, making it empirically applicable through modern sociological theory and the comparative investigation of the three cases yields three lessons for understanding and

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attending to fractured societies in Africa and Asia. The first lesson is theoretical and conceptual. Equipped with a way of conceptualizing how the building-blocks of political order configure into different forms of rule, of which the state is only one, we do not have to understand the absence of a state as the absence of rule. The principal conceptual lesson of early modern republicanism is that political organization does not have to be equated with the sovereign state nor authority with sovereignty. The collapse of a certain configuration of rules, the state, does not preclude other configurations of rules, in other words forms of rule, from emerging and being viable. The second lesson derives from analogies between the situations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and the new interpretations of the HRE, the USA and the EU presented in this book. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia we see the formation of territorial units or groups that are desirous of security, liberty and autonomy – not only from actors and systems outside the boundary of the de jure state in which they are located, but from each other. In all three countries attempts to create a single sovereign state acts as a driver of conflict, but creating a small states-system could act as a driver of even worse conflicts. This situation is analogous to the situation in the HRE after the Thirty Years’ War, in Europe after the Second World War and to some extent in North America after the War of Independence. Hence a solution that avoids both ideal types of “state” and “system of states” is necessary and the normative-political heritage of republicanism illustrates how. The third lesson is that republican commonwealths can be explored instead of states and states-systems. As opposed to federations where the component units yield the authority and capacity for armed force, we can envision forms of rule where the units retain authority over limited capabilities for armed force but share other functions of rule. Their authority would be restricted and their scope of action restrained. A limited range of foreign relations would be possible, even necessary for the units. These would have to be conditional, for example disallowing military alliances excluding the other units of the commonwealth. A possibility is to embed all units in a comprehensive alliance with one or more external partners. A precondition of the viability of this kind of arrangement, resembling the HRE and the EU as well as the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War, is the presence of a benign external protector. A republican political science or a science of the state My strategy in this book has been to analyse a set of entities for which the analytical and normative vocabulary of the state is unsuitable and

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distorting. I have demonstrated that the range of political forms is not limited to a spectrum between “state” and “system of states.” This insight is both historical and conceptual. There is a range of units that cannot be clearly categorized as the one or the other. It has been possible to create entities that are neither states nor “systems of states” and, moreover, they can be conceptualized on their terms, not those of the sovereign state. In turn these insights have repercussions on political science itself and its dependence on the state as an organizing concept. “The state” cannot be seen as a basic concept if it is to be understandable both synchronically and diachronically. Instead it must be seen as a historically specific instance of other more fundamental factors and conceptualized as such for the purpose of empirical studies. An analytical understanding based on concepts that are more removed from state–interstate discourse is not only beneficial if we want to understand political formations before or beyond this conceptual language. Our understanding of the modern state and relations between modern states would benefit if we were able to observe them from outside themselves and place them side by side with other political formations. A prerequisite of success for such a venture is that all formations are understood on their own terms and not through concepts specifically developed to describe or advocate a specific one. The integration of the ontology of modern systems theory entails that action does not have to be generated from within a particular system such as a bounded unitary state or a system of states. Neither are we forced to understand it only as generated by a super-system that regulates the behaviour of its units in a top- down fashion (such as in the Waltzian conception of the international system). Instead action is, or can be, constituted by relations between systems. Two examples are the relations between the European Union system, the Atlantic system and the global system as well as between the Holy Roman Empire system and the European system of states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Relations between territorial or geopolitical systems also have constitutive effects on action, as the example of the relation between the Holy Roman Empire and the bellicose Balkan system shows. To develop these findings into a general theory that explores relations between parallel systems as constitutive for action would require thorough studies of other periods, units and regions. I have also shown that the possibilities of action have direct impact on viability in the sense of the viability of a whole political system (the Empire and the EU) as well as in the sense of the viability of the

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members of this system (the imperial estates and the member states of the EU). Synergies, not parallel systems: social sciences and history Combining history and political science can generate fruitful insights in contemporary as well as historical subject matters. An ever-present risk is that subject matters are analysed with ill-fitting concepts that distort the interpretation. This problem is well known from anthropology as well as from more recent discussions in IR theory. The strategy of this book has been to change the conceptual apparatus through which the EU, European history and today’s “failed states” are usually understood. The means have been a combination of classical and early modern republican political theory with sociological institutionalism. This strategy is underwritten by a desire to question the current conceptual apparatus and the relation between history and social science and transcend the historicity of our disciplinary perspectives. If the social sciences, among which this book is particularly concerned with IR, can transcend or at least ameliorate their own historicity by historical work and theoretical innovation then they can make substantial contributions to the study of historical problems. One theoretical starting-point has been demonstrated in this book: the fusion of a pre-modern language of politics and modern theory. In order to create the necessary synergies it is important to temper the development of fields of empirical study towards academic subdisciplines that distinguish themselves against other disciplines in their environment in terms of material, theories, methods and the formulation of problems. An example is the tendency for EU studies to delimit itself against other fields of knowledge. There are also good reasons to restrain the opposite tendency towards unreflective inter-disciplinarity or ambitious strivings towards all- encompassing research programmes. Distinct perspectives are necessary to generate knowledge. In relation to some questions different academic perspectives are not compatible and do not have to be. In others they have to be, without however losing their strengths and distinctive character. To produce such synergies, however, it is necessary to critically reflect on what constitutes the essentials of a scholarly discipline and what can be modified. It is too limited to regard a certain method or perhaps a conceptual apparatus as essential, particularly in relation to studies spanning long periods of time or cultural gaps. Sometimes it is even

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necessary to investigate contemporary issues with concepts and on conditions that are not their own. Instead of seeing concepts and methods as central, a task for future reflection would be to identify modes of operation that unite or divide disciplines. Crucially, the sciences and their mutual relations have to be adapted to preserve the capacity to pose new questions. Our central task is, after all, the evolution of knowledge.

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Index Afghanistan, 170–172, 178, 180–181 Analogy, 4, 165, 174 Anarchy (in IR theory), 11–12, 14, 98, 183 Anarchy, (in republican political theory), 3, 42, 44, 47–48, 185–191 and the European Union, 120–121, 140, 146, 153 and the Holy Roman Empire, 57, 66, 68, 89–91 and the United States of America, 94, 97–100, 107, 115 Anti-Federalists (USA), 99, 103–105 Aristocracy, 35, 37, 42, 55, 79 Armed Estates, 79–83, 85, 87, 89, 115 Armed force in compound republics, 36–37, 43–44, 65–67, 101–104, 135, 158–159, 178 and political authority, 11–12, 184 Atlantic System, 2, 131–137, 151–158, 189, 191–192, 196 Austria, 89–91, 56, 151 Autonomous action, 28–29, 39–41, 46, 64–65, 68, 129–130, 149, 154, 184 Balance of Power, 69–70, 85–89 Balkans, 140–151, 193 Bavaria, 84–85, 89–90 Berlin, Isaiah, 63, 90, 102–103, 130–131, 186 Bodin, Jean, 9–11, 165 resistance to, 54–55, 63 Britain early modern 70, 85–86, 87 modern, 110, 189 Christian Wolff, 10, 31–32, 92 Civitas Maxima, 10, 37, 95 Community (Gemeinschaft) 189–190 Compound Republic the European Union as, 112–122, 137, 177–181

the Holy Roman Empire as, 54–56, 89–91 theory of, 3, 4, 39–50, 182–185, 193–194 the United States as, 92–94, 106–108, 117 Confederal Constitution (1776/81), 116–117 Confederate States of America, 116–117 Council of Ministers (EU), 123–125, 188 Coup d’État (against constitutions), 26, 81–83, 188–189 (EU) 116 Demise, see Viability Democracy as an Aristotelian form of rule, 35–37, 42, 79 modern, 119, 122, 144–146 Deudney, Daniel, 4, 29, 32–33, 98 Emperor, Holy Roman, 51–52, 58–60 Environment consisting of multiple systems, 13–15, 19–23, 67–71, 100–101, 131–140, 188–189 constitutive control of, 54, 148–151, 185, 193 Estates, system of, 16, 52–53, 65, 86, 189–190 European Council, 123–125, 126 European Monetary Union, 126–129 European Union Common European Security and Defence Policy (CESDP), 151–163 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 124–125, 139–140, 154, 156 Enlargement of, 144–151 Military Operations, 158–163

221

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222 Index External protector, 48–50, 185, 191–192 of the EU, 133–138, 162 of the HRE, 68, 73, 87 of the USA, 110 of weak states, 179, 180, 195 Federalism (American), 105–109 Federalism, as a theoretical concept 174–177 Federalists (USA), 98–99, 102–104, 112, 114 Forms of Rule, definition of, 17–18, 23–26 France early modern, 72, 73–81, 84–85 modern, 127, 135, 139, 159–160, 189 Germany, Federal Republic (1949– ), 120, 127, 134, 142 Habsburg, dynasty, 59, 61, 77–78, 80, 87, 89–91, 187–188 Hobbes, Thomas 5, 9–11, 37–39, 55, 165, 169, 172–174 Ideal Type (definition of), 4, 32 Imperial Circles, 67 Imperial Courts, 60–61, 83 Imperial Diet, 61, 124 Imperial war constitution, 67, 79–80 and the European Union, 120–121, 130, 133, 165, 169 and the Holy Roman Empire, 56–57, 66, 80 Internal tyranny, 3, 41–44, 48, 188, 190–191 and the United States of America, 93–94, 98–99, 111 Iraq, 165–166, 169–170, 173–174, 178, 195 Ius foederis, 65–66 Landeshoheit, 55, 57–58, 62–64, 67–71, 106, 129–131, 185–186 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von, 34, 55, 63–64, 169, 173–174, 183

Liberty in the European Union, 119–121, 124, 129–131, 135 in the Holy Roman Empire, 57–58, 62–64, 68, 83, 87 in opposition to empire, 42, 50, 112–116, 150 in the republican tradition, 3, 5, 34, 39–41, 43–48, 184, 186–187 in the United States of America, 93, 99, 108–109 Locke, John, 132–133, 174 Luhmann, Niklas, 15, 20, 22, 25, 129–131, 137 Majesty (Majestas), 64 Means of violence, see Armed force Mixed constitution, 35–39 Monarchy, 35, 37, 41, 55, 79 Montesquieu, Baron Secondat de, 34, 38, 173 Nestedness, of systems, 105–109 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, 14, 133–140, 145–149, 151–158, 161–163, 189, 192–193 North-West Ordinance (1787), 113–114 Oligarchy, 3, 42–44, 47, 165, 188–189 and the European Union, 120–121, 126, 128, 135, 140–142 and the Holy Roman Empire, 56–57, 59, 68, 81–84 and the United States of America, 94, 98–99 Onuf, Nicholas, 4, 18–19, 20–21, 24, 35, 63 Parties (modern), 106–107 Peace of Westphalia (including IPO/IPM) importance for the Holy Roman Empire, 59, 60, 62, 65, 71 in IR, 9, 51 Poggi, Gianfranco, 15–17, 47 Political science, see Social sciences Polybius, 47, 174

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Index Realism, 38 Republicanism, Republican political theory, 33–39, 194–195 as systems theory, 30–34, 183–184 Right and Duties, 20, 24–25, 40, 108–109, 176, 184–185 Rules as components of forms of rule/ systems, 18–21, 23–25, 26–28, 165, 169, 177, 185–186, 193 and the EU, 134–135, 143–144, 150 and the Holy Roman Empire, 63, 72, 74, 77, 83, 88 and the USA, 100–101 Schmitt, Carl (1888–1985), 11, 194 Social sciences, 16, 31–32, 51, 183, 197–198 Somalia, 170, 172–173 Sovereignty, 9–12, 16, 34, 37, 129, 183, 185–186 in the European Union, 125–126, 129–131, 133, 135 and failed states, 165, 173 and the Holy Roman Empire, 53–56, 63, 66, 69–71 in the United States of America, 101–105, 108–109 Ständestaat EU analogous to, 124 as a form of rule 16–17, 23, 34, 36–37, 192 as a systems theory, 32–33 State, 1–3 alternative concepts of, 15–18 as an analytical grid, 8–15, 51–54, 167–69, 172–174, 182, 195–197 definition of, 8, 12, 15 Strategic paradox, 45–46

223

Atlantic System, 137–138 in the EU 145–146, 159, 161, 185 in the HRE, 58 in the USA, 111 Survival, see Viability Systems, see Environment Thirty Years War, 71–72, 107–108, 121, 195 Threats, republican, see Anarchy, Oligarchy, Tyranny Treaty of Lisbon, 120, 122, 125, 157 Treaty of Nice, 155–156 Trust, 88, 105, 107, 113, 121, 160–161, 166, 175–177, 187, 190 Tyranny (in republican political theory), 3, 32, 41–44, 47–48, 169, 188, 190–91 and the European Union, 120–121, 130, 140–41, 148, 153, 158 and failed states, 165 and the Holy Roman Empire, 56–57, 62, 66, 68, 75, 80, 90 and the United States of America, 93–94, 98–99, 108 Unitary state ideal type of, 167, 172 thinking, 37–39 Viability, 2, 13–14, 17, 26–30, 46–50, 82–83, 92, 121–122, 138, 150–151, 187, 190, 194–196 Waltz, Kenneth N., 69–70, 196 War, see Armed force Weber, Max 8, 12, 15, 167 Yugoslavia, see Balkans

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