Representative Assemblies in Early Modern European State‐Building

The article reassesses the role played by parliaments and other representative structures in the European state‐building processes. It points to a need of going beyond the traditional antagonist conception of the relationships between rulers and social forces rooted in comparative historical political science, substituting it with a theory grounded in the concept of political exchange. A preliminary analysis of four cases (Brandenburg‐Prussia, Dutch Republic, Poland, and Sweden) is conducted, with the purpose of singling out the “internal” determinants — that is, institutional properties of the assemblies — that allowed them to integrate into the institutional framework of the states in formation, or that hindered such an integration. These determinants are found to consist in three main factors: organisational centralisation, working autonomy, and a significant interdependence relationship with a distinct and relatively autonomous governmental centre

Autonomy · Centralisation · Economic system · Economics · Economy · Opportunity structures · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · European Political History Analysis · Law · Public Administration