Philosophers in Parliament: The Crises of Eighteenth-Century Constitutionalism and the Nineteenth- Century Liberal Parliamentary Tradition The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Selinger, William. 2015. Philosophers in Parliament: The Crises of Eighteenth-Century Constitutionalism and the Nineteenth-Century Liberal Parliamentary Tradition. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845479 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Philosophers in Parliament: The Crises of Eighteenth-Century Constitutionalism and the Nineteenth-Century Liberal Parliamentary Tradition A dissertation presented by William Selinger to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts September 2015 © 2015 - William Selinger All Rights Reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Richard Tuck William Selinger Philosophers in Parliament: The Crises of Eighteenth-Century Constitutionalism and the Nineteenth-Century Liberal Parliamentary Tradition Abstract A crucial commitment of nineteenth-century French and English liberalism was to parliamentary government. Liberal authors including Benjamin Constant, John Stuart Mill, Francois Guizot, and Walter Bagehot all specifically advocated constitutional structures in which cabinet officials sat as legislative representatives, and required the “confidence” of the legislature to remain in office. This dissertation offers a historical account of how liberal political thinkers came to favor parliamentary government. It elucidates the arguments and normative commitments that influenced liberals to embrace parliamentary institutions, and demonstrates their continuing relevance to political theory. One particularly important liberal value was deliberation. Liberal authors were convinced that parliamentary government was more conducive to political deliberation than other forms of representative government, including American “presidentialism.” The first half of the dissertation examines the origins of parliamentary liberalism in eighteenth-century Britain and France. In Britain, I argue, liberal theories of parliamentary government originated in debates over legislative patronage. Defenders of patronage, such as David Hume and Robert Walpole, argued for the value of the king’s ministers serving in Parliament. Opponents of patronage, such as Henry Bolingbroke, argued that Parliament had to be able to regularly and habitually force out ministers. Both sides of this debate found iii themselves articulating a strikingly parallel idea: that the relationship between executive and legislature powers had to be worked out entirely within the legislature. I show that in France, this same idea became an important element of political thought because of the constitutional failures of the French Revolution. After 1789, the French National Assembly instituted a strict separation between legislative and executive power. As in the United States, executive officers were prohibited from sitting in the legislature. The legislature was also given no regular way of influencing ministerial appointments. The failure of such constitutional arrangements led political thinkers including Jacques Necker and Germaine de Staël to argue that the worst consequences of the French Revolution could have been avoided if France had adopted parliamentary-style institutions. A similar argument was advanced by Edmund Burke, who became a crucial figure in the liberal parliamentary traditions of both England and France. The second half of the dissertation explores the sophisticated theories of parliamentary government that were expressed by nineteenth-century liberal authors such as Constant, Guizot, Bagehot, and Mill. I also detail the complex position of Alexis de Tocqueville—an admirer of American constitutionalism who preferred parliamentary government for France—within parliamentary liberalism. These liberal thinkers disagreed over the role of ministers in a parliamentary assembly; over how to deal with challenges like corruption and cabinet instability; and over whether democracy and parliamentarism could be compatible. But they were convinced that non-parliamentary forms of representative government were defective at promoting deliberation, and led to destructive conflicts between executive and legislature. Their arguments remain an important resource for Americans trying to understand the recurrent pathologies of our political culture and institutions. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Eighteenth-Century Political Thought and the Origins of 31 Liberalism Chapter 2. Edmund Burke’s Theory of Parliamentary Politics 67 Chapter 3. The French Revolution and the Liberal Parliamentary Turn: 112 Necker, Constant, and the Whigs of Edinburgh Chapter 4. Patronage and Cabinet Instability: Benjamin Constant, 174 Francois Guizot and the Challenges of French Parliamentary Politics Chapter 5. Tocqueville and Mill on Parliamentarism and Democracy 225 Conclusion 278 v Acknowledgments I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee for their advice and support over these last several years. Through seminars and conversations, Richard Tuck taught me how to practice the history of political thought. His scholarship and mentorship set the highest example, to which I will always aspire. I am grateful to Eric Nelson for so strongly urging me to keep my attention focused on parliament at an early stage of this project—when I could only barely see what might come of that—and for steering me in the right direction at so many other points. I was lucky to have Cheryl Welch and Harvey Mansfield, two of the world’s foremost experts on nineteenth-century political thought, as part of my committee. I have learned an enormous amount from their comments and erudition. Michael Frazer has been an invaluable source of insight and encouragement. He has especially pushed me to reflect on the contemporary implications and twentieth-century legacy of the ideas in this dissertation. Throughout the process of writing I have learned from stimulating conversations about this project with David Armitage, Eric Beerbohm, Bryan Garsten, John Harpham, Nick Juravich, Sungho Kimlee, Samuel Jacobson, Adam Lebovitz, Patchen Markell, John McCormick, Samuel Moyn, Jennifer Page, Travis Pantin, Nancy Rosenblum, Nathan Tarcov, and Julianne Werlin. Rita Koganzon and Madhav Khosla both read drafts of multiple chapters, offering reassurance when I had doubts, as well as sharp critical comments. Greg Conti has been an extraordinary interlocutor, and many of the ideas in this dissertation first arose through conversations with him. vi It is impossible for me to imagine writing this dissertation if I had not met Emily Warner. In part that is because she has taught me so much intellectually. But it is mainly because I cannot imagine any part of my life without the magic she has brought. My parents and brother have been the greatest source of love and encouragement throughout my life. Graduate school has been no exception. I dedicate this dissertation to them. vii Note on Translations: Whenever possible, I have used the modern English edition of foreign language texts. For texts where there is no modern English edition, and which I have cited in the original language, all translations are my own. viii Introduction Why study the liberal political thinkers of late eighteenth and nineteenth-century France and England? Few answers to this question are more intriguing than the answer given by Carl Schmitt in 1925. Responding to a critic of his recently published book, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Schmitt argued that it was impossible to understand the nature of parliamentary government, or the challenges facing parliamentary governments in the twentieth century, without first studying older liberal authors. Schmitt wrote: Like every great institution, parliament presupposes certain characteristic ideas. Whoever wants to find out what these are will be forced to return to Burke, Bentham, Guizot, and John Stuart Mill. He will then be forced to admit that after them, since about 1848, there have certainly been many new practical considerations but no new principled arguments….what is specific to parliamentarism can only be gleaned from their thought.1 This statement was written by one of the twentieth century’s most influential opponents of liberalism, a man who later joined the Nazi party, and was appointed by Adolph Hitler to high legal and academic positions.2 And yet, like so much of Schmitt’s thought, it raises difficult and important questions about the meaning and heritage of liberalism.3 There are two crucial institutional practices which make for a parliamentary government, or what Schmitt called “parliamentarism.” First, cabinet ministers holding executive office also sit in the legislature. Second, parliament has a regular determination over who occupies those 1 Carl Schmitt, “On the Contradiction between Parliamentarism and Democracy,” The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, tr. Ellen Kennedy, (Cambridge MA: 1985), 2 2 For a