Abstract
It is true, as commentators note and Daniel Lee restates, that Jean Bodin is a figure in the history of political thought more widely cited than actually read. Bodin is taken to represent a strand of political theory in which the concepts of the state and sovereignty are preeminent and that is often reduced to the term ‘absolutist’. Lee’s book offers a reassessment of Bodin’s thought and consists of five substantive chapters that each deal with a key Bodinian theme and thus covers the state, sovereignty, citizenship, absolute power and the law of nations. Approaching Bodin this way, that is, through concepts central not only to his own thought but also those germane to contemporary political theory, Lee renews Bodin’s relevance and in turn opens up thought-provoking avenues.
The chapter on the state seeks to rescue Bodin from interpretations that confuse his concept of the state with the later Westphalian concept centred on territory. Lee demonstrates that, for Bodin, the state is a juridical not a geographical conception. For Bodin, it was ‘shared subjection to one common superior authority’ (p. 65) that defined the state. To think in these terms, then, challenges the central tenets of those theories that emphasise sovereignty’s territoriality and provokes us to consider the wider implications of thinking beyond territory, for example by questioning the role of borders in the refugee crisis.
At the heart of Lee’s argument is that Bodin’s theory of sovereignty is very different from the common caricature. In the literature, whether it be in political theory or international relations, sovereignty is often equated with force. However, Lee shows that Bodin’s concept of sovereignty is not reducible to mere force but rather is understood juridically as a ‘special kind of legal right’ (p. 66). He argues that sovereignty is a relational concept indicative of the relationship between sovereign and subject, just as slavery (dominium) illustrates the relationship between master and slave. The third chapter follows on from this and explores what it means to be a citizen, which for Bodin, is defined as being a ‘free subject’. This is because this relationship is an example not of dominium but rather imperium.
Lee turns the Bodinian notion of absolute power on its head. Bodin infamously defines sovereignty in his Les Six livres de la République as ‘the absolute and perpetual power of a state’, and the term absolute here has been a source of discussion ever since. Lee argues that Bodin’s use of absolute is not as an adjective used to describe the way in which power is held – or as Lee puts it, ‘some non-trivial commitment to political “absolutism”’ (p. 148) – but rather how the power is used, that is, ‘a power, not so much over men, but a power over the laws that govern men’ (p. 151).
In essence, absolute power is the power not only to legislate but also to absolve – or, as Lee puts it, to make and unmake. Lee underscores his point by way of linguistic analysis: unlike the English adjective absolute, the French and Latin word is a ‘verbal participle’ (pp. 160–161). As such, absolute is a derivative ‘from the transitive verb, “to absolve”’. Lee’s study forces us to reconsider Bodin’s fundamental legacy in the history of political thought which, from this perspective, has not been determined on his own theory, but rather on his reception by those with ‘genuine absolutist and royalist commitments’ (p. 160).
Lee contends that Bodin’s sovereignty is both a ‘bundle’ of rights and duties (p. 220) and thus anticipates the Responsibility to Protect doctrine that emerged as a political commitment to end heinous crimes against humanity. This paves the way for further exploration of this anticipation in other historical figures – such as Hugo Grotius, for example – and questions the clarity of our understanding of sovereignty. For example, if the supposed chief proponent of absolute sovereignty does not even endorse such a definition, we must look anew at our perception of the concept and its scholarly implications.
Lee’s book is an excellent example of how fruitful studies in the history of political thought can be for contemporary political theory. Aside from correcting a long-standing view of Bodin, Lee’s book also offers an important reconsideration of sovereignty itself and suggests that our skewed understanding is the result of a modern corruption rather than an outdated and unfashionable definition. Sovereignty remains central not only to the state but also to the international state system, and despite pleas to move away from it and observations of its diminished relevance, Lee nevertheless cements the concept’s relevance and rescues it from misunderstanding and misappropriation. That being said, it remains important to be critical about the role and the power of the state and sceptical of appeals to sovereignty in politics today.
