Peter Paccione

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Independent scholar
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Primary interest: Comparative European political and constitutional history.

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The Austrian estates and the Habsburg monarchy

A brief history of the early modern Austrian estates and their relationship with the Habsburg mon... more

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English Constitutional Theory and the Cromwellian Upper House

This paper studies the Other House, the upper house of Parliament under the Protectorate. It atte... more

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Continuity in French constitutional history

This paper considers the constitutional history of France, especially the history of representati... more This paper considers the constitutional history of France, especially the history of representative institutions, the state bureaucracy, and of executive power, both before and after the Revolution. It puts forward the idea that the history of the French state is one that has many characteristics of continuity as well as those of change. The history of the French constitution is one of the development of an administrative state and of institutions which impose limits on that state.

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Habeas Corpus in the Commonwealth and Protectorate

A brief article about the writ of habeas corpus during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth... more

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Representative government in early modern Britain and Austria

The article compares early modern British and Habsburg representative institutions, exploring the... more The article compares early modern British and Habsburg representative institutions, exploring the history of both in order to explain how they came to function as crucial parts of the fiscal-military states of both countries. The article examines the history of the Austrian and Hungarian representative bodies in an attempt to understand how they came to play the same role in their state as the British Parliament did in its state. In the case of Austria, I will explore how the history of the estates contradicts the traditional interpretation of the establishment of a Habsburg “absolute” state.

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Representative government in sixteenth-century England and France

In order to consider the question of how the position of the English Parliament compared to that ... more In order to consider the question of how the position of the English Parliament compared to that of other European assemblies, I believe that it is necessary to examine the political structure of early modern France. I will consider the powers and functions of the Tudor Parliament and those of the representative bodies of sixteenth-century France. In this, it will be my contention that in order to assess the French constitution, it is essential to include the provincial estates in that assessment as well as the Estates General. Several of the provincial estates continued to function after the Estates General went into abeyance, and they proved to be very useful to the royal government, especially in the area of finance. In my assessment of the French government, I also include the Parlement of Paris and the provincial parlements, because they were important institutions which exercised the function of registering royal legislation, including fiscal legislation, and therefore could be compared with the English Parliament. I hope to show that the two states were more similar than has been traditionally portrayed, in that they were both limited by corporate institutions and elements such as the nobility and corporate rights and privileges.

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Representative government in south Germany and the myth of the Sonderweg

Bavaria and Württemberg were two German states in which estates-based representative government s... more Bavaria and Württemberg were two German states in which estates-based representative government survived the early modern period, which has traditionally been considered the period when representative institutions were supposedly in decline. I will show that these two states were among those European states which preserved their representative institutions and avoided becoming “absolutist.” I also put the developments in these states into a wider European perspective. This is an expanded version of an earlier paper, "Representative government in early modern Bavaria and Württemberg."

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Continuity as a characteristic of revolutions

This is an essay on comparative constitutional history and comparative revolution. In it, I will ... more This is an essay on comparative constitutional history and comparative revolution. In it, I will consider the development of the rule of law as a phase of state building, paying particular attention to representative institutions. I will compare the constitutional histories of England, France, Russia, Germany and the United States from their origins to the point in each nation's history which I consider the end of that country's revolution. It is my thesis that all revolutions are about law and constitutional arrangements, and that continuity is a characteristic of the political and constitutional arrangements which exist before and after revolutions.

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Early modern France and Austria as baroque states

The paper is a comparison of the political systems of early modern France and the Habsburg empire... more The paper is a comparison of the political systems of early modern France and the Habsburg empire, especially as it pertains to representative institutions. Like France, the Habsburg state possessed institutions which imposed limits on its monarchy. Recent scholarship has begun to revise the traditional interpretation of absolutism and to portray European monarchies as actually limited in their power. This paper is an examination of France and the Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period, primarily the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which shows that both monarchies were limited by institutions and not "absolute" in the traditional sense.

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Patronage in early modern Russia

Recent scholarship has begun to revise the traditional picture of the Russian monarchy as "autocr... more Recent scholarship has begun to revise the traditional picture of the Russian monarchy as "autocratic" and all-powerful. The Russian political system was vastly more complicated. Government in early modern Russia has been revealed as being not very different from that of the other European states. The relationship of the Russian rulers to their nobility was more complicated than has been previously portrayed. As in the rest of Europe, the Russian state depended on noble patronage groups to govern the country. Patronage was crucial in the governing of Muscovite Russia, and it continued to be so after the reforms of Peter the Great attempted to make the central government function along western lines. I believe that the importance of patronage in Russian governance is one aspect of how early modern Russia shared many characteristics with western Europe in that it was an example of how the state was dependent on the nobility to rule the country.

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Representative government in medieval Austria and Hungary

Austria and Hungary, in common with other medieval European states, possessed a political system ... more Austria and Hungary, in common with other medieval European states, possessed a political system in which the prince shared power with a representative body, or diet, to which several estates were summoned by the prince to give him aid and counsel. By the fifteenth century, the Habsburg states had developed representative institutions which would exist until 1848. In order to understand the longevity of the Austrian and Hungarian estates, I believe that it is necessary to examine their origins in the medieval period.

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Parliament and Taxation, 1604-1689

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The French constitution of 1958 and the Russian constitution of 1993: a comparison

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The Russian constitution of 1993 in historical perspective

, the Russian Federation adopted a new constitution. This was seen by many in the West as a devel... more , the Russian Federation adopted a new constitution. This was seen by many in the West as a development that would lead to a new, democratic, law-based political order in Russia. Instead, it resulted in the establishment of the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. I will attempt to explain some of the reasons I believe this happened. This paper is my personal view based on many years of study of Russian history. Because of limits of space and time, I decided to use only English-language secondary sources. I am considering writing a more detailed version using Russian sources, but this will take some time to produce. Russia's history as an autocracy dates to the sixteenth century. There was in Muscovite Russia, as Richard Hellie writes, "no 'separation of powers'…in the modern sense, and relatively little separation of functions in this context, either. The executive essentially ran everything; it served (with the rarest of exceptions) as its own legislative arm, and also was its own judiciary. This was reflected in the chancelleries, most of which had administrative, judicial and perhaps some executive responsibilities." 1 The tsars possessed the supreme legislative prerogative. They had the sole power to make law, whether by decree (ukaz), administrative ruling (razporiazhenie), or imperial command (vysochaishchee povlenie). They could overrule or cancel existing laws or procedures. The imperial legislative prerogative was unlimited by any definition of authority or by any institutions. Any delegation of their power was seen as an infringement on their legislative authority. Every attempt to codify Russian law after 1649 failed because codification was considered to be a limitation of the imperial legislative prerogative. For the same reason, the tsars distrusted a strong judiciary, which was seen as a threat to their authority, and the judicial system was to remain a part of administration until the late eighteenth century. The majority of judges were members of the nobility, which possessed a tradition of state service and were loyal to the monarchy, to which they owed their wealth and power. Although Russian rulers paid lip service to legal institutions and the rule of law, they insisted on exercising supreme legislative authority and could not tolerate any limits on it. 2 The judicial reform of 1864 for the first time imposed limits on the imperial legislative authority. It created an independent judiciary which saw the dispensing of justice, which until then had been a prerogative of the monarch, as a special responsibility. 3 The new Russian judicial system fit very uncomfortably into the existing government structure. As Richard Wortman writes, "For the Russian autocracy to accept an independent judiciary required that it betray its essence and cease to be the Russian autocracy." 4 The Russian constitution of 1906, also known as the Fundamental Laws, provided for a State Duma elected for five-year terms, although the tsar had the right to dissolve it at any time.

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The ancient constitution and taxation in early Stuart England, 1604-1629

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Representative Government in Medieval England and France

This is a comparison of the development of representative institutions in medieval England and Fr... more

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Papers by Peter Paccione

On French "absolutism"

Academia Letters, 2021

Richard Bonney, in his article "Absolutism: What's In a Name?", writes that "absolute power" can ... more Richard Bonney, in his article "Absolutism: What's In a Name?", writes that "absolute power" can be simply defined as "'the freedom of the monarch in practice from institutional checks on his power', in short, a regime where the ruler is not limited by institutions outside the kingship itself."[1] This definition illustrates the absurdity of the entire concept of "French absolutism." The monarchy which Bonney describes never existed. The French monarchy was never completely free from institutional checks on its power, even during the height of "absolutism" under Louis XIV. There existed the sovereign courts and the provincial estates, which continued to function right up until the Revolution. Concentrating on the monarchy's relationship with these institutions, I hope to show that while the French kings were absolute in theory, in reality they were not. By the eighteenth century, there remained four grand pays d'états: Brittany, Burgundy, Provence and Languedoc. The primary function of the estates was to vote taxes for the royal government, and they also played an important role in the administration of their provinces.[2] The provincial estates, as Dominique Le Page and Jérôme Loiseau write, continued to exercise their traditional functions of giving consent to and the administration of taxation, and they had taken on new ones, most importantly the borrowing of money on behalf of the royal government. In the late seventeenth century, the estates, trying to avoid higher direct taxes, had "acquired a significant financial credit." The finance ministry "used the credit of the estates to pledge loans on behalf of the king. Indeed, the financial credit of the estates refers, in the last analysis, to their administrative capacities which are in the hands of permanent executive commissions whose members are chosen by assembly, in agreement with the king."[3] According to Arlette Jouanna, Louis XIV came to terms with the provincial estates because he borrowed money from them "whose credit was secure, at a lower rate than that granted to him by the financiers, who had been put off by the lawsuits brought against them at the beginning of the

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Representative government in early modern Bavaria and Württemberg

Academia Letters, 2021

Bavaria and Württemberg were two southern German states in which estates-based representative gov... more Bavaria and Württemberg were two southern German states in which estates-based representative government survived the early modern period, which has traditionally been considered the period when representative institutions were supposedly in decline. I will show that these two states were among those European states which preserved their representative institutions and avoided becoming "absolutist." I will also put the developments in these states into a wider European perspective. Because of the limitations of space, I was unable to go into much depth about some aspects of this study which require further detail. I regret this, and I am working on a longer version of the paper which will go into much more detail about many of the subjects discussed. In 1505, the four Bavarian duchies, Munich, Landshut, Ingolstadt, and Straubing, reunified under the Wittelsbachs, and their estates became one institution; in 1508 the Declaration of the Country's Liberties was issued by the ducal government, according to which the dukes had to swear to uphold the privileges of the estates upon their accession. The estates also chose officials to collect taxes and oversee their spending, creating their own financial administration. The Bavarian estates were composed of the clergy, nobility, and towns. These three estates comprised a corporation, the Landschaft, which would exist until the end of the eighteenth century. During the sixteenth century, the dukes summoned the estates frequently to request financial assistance with their debts, and they also levied taxes without the estates' consent. In 1542, an excise tax on wine and beer was granted by the diet, but it later became permanent.[1] Maximilian I (1597-1651, after 1623 elector) called two diets, in 1605 and 1612, both of which granted him money, but during the Thirty Years War he levied taxes by decree. In 1669, the last plenary meeting of the diet was called by Ferdinand Maria (1651-79) and agreed to the elector's financial demands. To perform the functions of the diet while it was

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Absolutism and representative government in France and Austria

Academia Letters, 2021

This paper is a comparison of French and Austrian absolutism, particularly as it pertains to the ... more This paper is a comparison of French and Austrian absolutism, particularly as it pertains to the relationship between the crown and representative and judicial institutions. It analyzes the relationship between the French monarchy and the Estates General, the provincial estates, and the parlements, especially the Parlement of Paris, and the relationship between the Habsburg monarchy and the Austrian estates, especially the estates of Lower Austria. It analyzes the role of these institutions in French and Austrian governance, particularly the granting of taxation and the lending of money by them to the respective governments. In 1439, the Estates General granted Charles VII a taille of 100,000 livres; henceforth, the government would continue to seek consent to taxation from the provincial and local estates. 1 In 1484, the Estates General voted taxes for the last time; after this meeting, the government continued to collect the taille without the Estates' consent. The crown would thereafter obtain consent to taxation at the provincial level. 2 The Estates did not meet between 1484 and 1560; they became a body which met only in times of crisis or royal weakness. According to Bernard Barbiche, the Estates General did not become an "ordinary institution, essential for the normal, smooth functioning of the state." 3 By the eighteenth century, there were four grand pays d'états: Brittany, Burgundy, Provence and Languedoc. The primary function of the provincial estates was to vote taxes for the royal government, and they also played an important role in the administration of their provinces. Unlike the Estates General, the provincial estates met at regular intervals: annually in Langue

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