Kings as Judges: Power, Justice, and the Origins of Parliaments. By DeborahBoucoyannis, Cambridge University Press. pp. 386
本书提出议会是由强大国王召集贵族处理司法事务而建立的，而非传统认为的弱王为征税对强精英让步；通过英格兰、法国、卡斯蒂利亚等多国历史证据论证这一理论。
With Kings as Judges, Deborah Boucoyannis has written an impressive book on historical political development, focusing especially on the emergence and development of parliaments. Boucoyannis develops an original and fascinating theoretical argument, centering on the role of powerful kings and their ability to call on their nobilities to gather in one location and deal with issues of justice. She also amasses a wealth of empirical evidence from a diverse set of countries, extending all the way back to the 12th century. England is the main case, and the primary contrast cases are France and Castille. Yet, Boucoyannis' book also comprises lengthy discussions of developments in, inter alia, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Flanders, Sweden, and the Ottoman and Holy Roman empires. The rather complex argument can be crudely summarized as follows: Historically, country-wide parliaments with frequent meetings required strong rulers, as only they could compel often reluctant nobility, from throughout the territory, to attend. Further, it was the recurring issues of adjudicating disputes and delivering justice that were key in spurring parliamentary development, rather than the need to pass new taxes—a far less frequent endeavor. To put it bluntly, parliaments were built by strong kings presiding as judges, often facing a resistant but relatively weak nobility, and not—as the conventional story goes—as a concession to a strong elite by weak kings who needed taxes to fight wars. Indeed, Boucoyannis argues that strong central powers, with royal control over land, is a necessary condition for the development of polity-wide representative institutions, and the persistence and further strengthening of these institutions require that they—over time—take on multiple functions, such as judicial matters, taxation, and lawmaking. Down the line, such “functionally layered” parliaments with regular meetings could allow elites to solve collective action problems and constrain the (initially strong) monarch. In cases where the monarch was initially weak relative to the nobility, such nationwide parliaments would not develop, paradoxically paving the way for absolutism in countries such as Louis XIV's France. The book's main strength lies in the remarkable overview of historical developments and events, especially in the primary case of England. The author draws on a vast number and variety of sources and uses them to make several important and underappreciated observations. The ambition and ability to compare and contrast a wide variety of cases is impressive, and adds credibility to the claims of general patterns. The book is also highly creative and original, not shying away from contending against conventional wisdom or some of the more prominent theories in political development such as bellicist theories of state building or neo-institutionalist theories of development. Yet, the creativity and originality of the book is also related to some weaknesses. The book makes several strong claims on the validity of the main argument, and how alternative accounts are misguided, but where at least this reader remains not fully convinced. In some places, existing alternative arguments are not presented in a sufficiently nuanced manner. To take one example, it is proposed that Olson's theory of roving versus stationary bandits does not solve the dilemma of why strong stationary bandits are not predatory, although this is a key aspect of the theory. In other places, potentially problematic assumptions are invoked—for instance, representative institutions in several smaller city-states with weak leaders are disregarded as less relevant since they are not “polity-wide”, and their lacking duration is assigned to weak executives—in a manner that opens up for the evidence being interpreted as conforming better with the main argument. In yet other places, there is a too lenient interpretation of different, selected pieces of data to corroborate the argument (e.g., using time trends in English revenue extraction per capita over the centuries as evidence for the argument without controlling for or critically discussing potential confounders). Further, Boucoyannis is right in arguing that past accounts have often focused too much on certain time periods such as the Glorious Revolution in England and the reign of Louis XIV in France, and she certainly demonstrates the importance of analyzing also earlier developments. Yet, the book suffers from similar selective attention, albeit focusing on earlier and different time periods than existing accounts. It would, for example, have been very interesting to see a more fully developed discussion of the fit, or potential limitations, of Boucoyannis' argument when considering France under Louis XIV, a period during which the French king certainly had the power to compel French nobles and where one might then have expected polity-wide parliamentary development. In sum, I would have preferred a somewhat more balanced discussion of the merits of the book's argument and those of alternative explanations (which might rather be complementary explanations), more consideration of scope conditions, more discussions on how insights from the book and previous work can be fused, clearer definitions of concepts such as state strength and delineation from related ones such rulers' relative power over contending social groups, and more critical and systematized testing of implications from the book's argument. While enticing, the book's strong conclusions about “necessary conditions” are thus ultimately unconvincing. However, I prefer to think of this as an issue of framing and presentation, and I do draw several new and valuable lessons from the book. Undoubtedly, the insightful theoretical discussions and wide-ranging empirical analysis in Boucoyannis' book make for an impressive and very important contribution to the literature on historical political development. The book contributes with new knowledge on a host of important issues, such as the importance of including the nobility for building strong and viable institutions. Reading it was a great academic experience, and I have subsequently modified several of my prior beliefs about historical political development. This goes not only for specifics, such as the relative power of the English King versus his nobility in the medieval age, but also for more general relationships, such as the relative importance of matters of justice for the formation and sustenance of early parliaments.