Kings as judges: power, justice, and the origins of parliaments

Abstract

Was representative government in Western Europe the natural outcome of weak rulers? Were rulers forced to concede power to constituencies who bargained away revenue (taxes and loans to fund government operations) in return for participation in legislative assemblies? In her study Kings as Judges, Boucoyannis argues that strength at the centre is a better way to explain the growth of representative institutions. She concentrates her evidence on the centre’s capacity to deliver justice (28–36). Boucoyannis argues that the royal ambition to centralize power preceded the claims of ‘urban mercantile classes’ who sought to cash out the motto ‘no taxation without representation’, that is, to claim a role in national governance (8–9). In thirteenth-century England–an interval of ‘admittedly constant battle over consent’ to taxation (98-104)–barons refused the King’s demands for taxation in the 1240s, after having been ‘forced to grant “countless sums of money” to the King’ (99). But ‘no representatives were called’ at that time (99). ‘Conflict at the beginning and end of the thirteenth century was therefore similar: baronial opposition articulated around Magna Carta and, despite temporary set backs, and relentless conflict, an increasing relative advantage of the crown’ (101). Boucoyannis draws support from John Maddicott who has argued that ‘similarity of oppression’ (his phrase) brought ‘lords and knights together to counter the crown and to represent the community’ (100-01). ‘Initial state capacity’ to assert power (104), she argues, can be a significant factor in bringing about ‘polity-wide institutions’ (8-9). Relying on Joseph A Schumpeter’s 1918 essay ‘The Crisis of the Tax State’–which Boucoyannis calls the ‘canonical essay’ on this point (104)–a methodological point also comes into focus, one which