Governance in course axes

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Governance in the Electorate of Saxony or rulership practice in the Electorate of Saxony describes the degree and type of involvement of civil society in the political-administrative decision-making process , with the aim of changing the ruling institutions in Electoral Saxony . In addition, it determines the relevant actors and their position in the political-administrative system in the state of Electoral Saxony. The veto players in the course axes of the early modern period are identified and the respective political decision-making processes and means of design of their time are disclosed and analyzed.

The concept of transferring the administrative methods of the present to the state-building processes of the early modern period has existed since the 2000s.

The Saxon governance structures were characterized by a non-simultaneity of existing traditional and newer government and administrative structures as well as by recurring processes of the negotiation of authority.

Governance in Saxony

Framework of governance

Structures of rule should not only be viewed in the context of statehood ( state centrism ). So there were the feudal property rule ( manors , courts ) or the Patriarchate in the sociological sense in the family but also social framework and the church patriarchy , urban and rural communities defined the a significant proportion of the forms of domination in the Middle Ages and then accounted for, a company in the sum and cemented. The state started from almost zero in the late Middle Ages. Before the state could lay its central functions of rule over the other actors, it grew slowly over centuries at a low level, while the non-state actors maintained their autonomous functions of rule.

Non-state actors at the corporate level were the nobility, cities and the church. In addition, individual individuals within the corporate element determined the structure of the internal system at all times and influenced external events. Taken together, this resulted in the rulership structures of the Electorate of Saxony, which subconsciously organized the overall institutional change of the territory with all of the changes in it, in comparison with the adjacent territories and overlying contemporary developments, without a clear objective or order situation.

Like the other German states, the Electoral Saxon state developed from a dualistic corporate and financial state of the 16th and early 17th centuries from the middle of the 17th century into an expansive military, economic and administrative state.

Hardly anyone, if any, had awareness of their own individual action and its effects on the whole. Due to information deficits and general ignorance of the situation, the actor perspective was always only a minimal section of the whole thing and corresponded to a bounded rationality and the principle of trial and error in a process that somehow muddled through . Only the overall effects can be observed and assessed from a historical perspective. The course of events, on the other hand, was always only vaguely recognizable and interpretable for the actors involved.

For the overarching process of institutional change in which the Electoral Saxony area and its residents were involved, the principle of the invisible hand of Adam Smith applied then as now .

Acting forces

The overall development in Saxony was overall successful from an administrative point of view. However, there was no automatism of whatever kind or normative implications of a Eurocentric growth or improvement process in the early modern period. Destabilizing currents and decomposing or centrifugal forces always had an impact on the Electoral Saxon community, but they did not take on any system-breaking dimensions. The Krell affair and the brief attempt to establish Calvinism by a small minority were quickly corrected by the majority of the representatives of Lutheran Orthodoxy . System failure at the state level usually leads to the disintegration of the territorial structure. Failed-state features had spread at the same time, for example, in Poland-Lithuania , for which Saxony temporarily maintained a personal union. But even the Saxon-Polish Union could not stop or reverse the Polish process of disintegration. Only outside forces acted that represented a danger to the internal structure of rule and severely disturbed it in several ways, especially in the Silesian Wars .

Feudal ties and structures were conservative forces. They limited progress.

The commercial bourgeoisie of Leipzig also developed their own autonomous structures, parallel to the state structures of the prince. They were integrated into a global trading network and followed their own thought structures and system preferences. They withdrew from the electoral system of rule.

features

  • Communication systems
  • Symbolism of power
  • Forms of rule
    • government : means central state directives, orders, commands, prohibitions, orders etc. in a policy field
    • governance : means “negotiating” in a multidimensional space with unclear constellations of actors.
  • Groups and interest camps along the social classes
  • Degrees of cohesion and bonding
  • political program and agendas
  • degree of social differentiation
  • Spatial relationships
  • Economic order

Late Middle Ages

The ruling system at the end of the Middle Ages was organized in a feudal manner and, as elsewhere in Europe, was an association of people . The prince, as a person, was the state. Externalized and depersonalized state structures did not go much further than the princely chest of the court chancellery with the agreements and treaties that the Saxon duke always carried with him on his travels. The prince secured his power over his personal entourage system (Hofrat), with changing affiliations, which remained highly informal and non-transparent. Government action was based on traditional ideas of subordination, feudal succession and feudal service and it was based on oral tradition. Documents and contracts were only available for a small part of the administrative agendas. Feuds were common for political conflict resolution. Travel domination and decentralized concentration of power over a wide network of sovereign castles secured the position of the sovereign, the supreme feudal lord in his territorial structure. The “space” was wide and impenetrable, the autonomy of the local nobility was great, government activity on the whole at a low level. Bailiffs were the prince's representatives in the country. State parliaments were established in the late Middle Ages and established an early representative system. City federations in the late Middle Ages had increased urban autonomy as a whole, city ​​air made free . A more self-confident urban patriciate in the early Saxon centers such as Freiberg , Annaberg or Leipzig strengthened the urban autonomy. The municipal council system established its own autonomous forms of government at the local level. Initially, the prince lacked the financial means and his own power base to do justice to the changes in power. The late medieval agricultural crisis led to a deterioration in the landlords' return on land and led to the impoverishment of the nobility. The sovereign had to laboriously and expensively maintain the peace . This was always at risk. Lawlessness and robbery knighthood became common manifestations in Saxony as well. Conflicts between the veto players were resolved by circumventing the applicable law. This included, for example, the Altenburg prince robbery of 1455. Around 1500, social, economic and technological revolutions brought a new era that challenged the feudal structures of rule. The feudal nobility came under economic hardship from sovereigns and the newly emerging middle class. It was more difficult to adapt to the new circumstances.

In short, the development culminated in an increasing differentiation of forms of life, individuality and subjectivity increased. Areas and groupings that were drifting apart with their own interests increased the plurality but also the particularity and competition of opposing interests. For the people of the time, these were threatening and unsettling factors that, along with general legal uncertainty , shaped life. The church itself was eliminated as an anchor of stability and found itself in a structural drift .

Oaths of loyalty and vows and homage had a very high starting value in the state-ruling system of action, as long as the written form and orientation to a legal system were more the exception than the rule. This state of affairs lasted until the 18th century, but lost some of its effectiveness by then.

Electoral Saxony succeeded, aided by large new silver finds in the Ore Mountains and a new mountain screeching , a sustainable consolidation of the internal structures. Saxony's rulers gained the financial resources for building their own structures through the mining income.

Renaissance

Government action was initially at a low and original level. This changed quickly from 1500 onwards, as the constellation of actors in the Saxon rulership structure in the 16th century had a clear will to shape things. An orderly sovereign rulership met actively participating estates, which were led by aristocratic and bourgeois functional elites. From 1500 Dresden was expanded into a planned residence. This gave Saxony a clear center of power. This became the seat of the differentiated central administration and the place of ceremonial representation. The early modern state formation picked up speed. The emerging state endeavored to obtain the monopoly of force, to concentrate the centralization of financial revenues and their administration as well as military power in the hands of the prince.

Either social conflicts and economic concentration processes or fiscal / military and geopolitical necessities became the motor of this development.

The church was morally decrepit and thus delegitimized in the spirit of the times. Tensions erupted in the Reformation, which culminated in the dissolution of the self-organization competence of the church in Saxony.

From 1776 to 1831, the Dresden country house was the last meeting place for the estates.

The representative system of the Electorate of Saxony achieved inadequate democratic values ​​for today's standards, since the representative bodies were only valid for real estate corporate actors. On the other hand, social skills were poorly developed in many places. The degree of social development determined the type and form of the institutional superstructure that could be formed over it and the political culture . Negotiations and consultation required an appropriately educated target group. Social milieus with underdeveloped social norms usually led to more directive forms of rule. That was the starting point at the beginning of the Renaissance in Saxony. The rulership of the Renaissance princes was strongly patriarchal in line with the zeitgeist . Potency and a sense of power combined with brutal show trials were a general part of political communication and staging . Deterrence served to manifest one's own power.

The constant reforming of all social structures in Saxony, pushed by the early bourgeois revolution between 1517 and 1525, has enabled the orderly and central establishment of complex system and organizational structures since 1500, as a result of which a comprehensive, pre-modern state was formed over the population, which balances social and manorial interests organized. The decentralized exercise of public authority in the hands of aristocratic, ecclesiastical and urban landlords was now overshadowed by sovereign institutions. The rule was centralized. Roman law penetrated the administration of justice and replaced oral judicial practice with written trials.

The separation of state affairs from the reference area of ​​the Saxon court of the prince and the formation of new authorities led to a reification and publication of the state. Technical experts were now required to operate this system. This system is in the administrative science called political-administrative system and includes all supporting actors that the institutions change process arranged in the Electorate of Saxony, centralized, politically legitimate and transpose. The actors brought together the interests of the relevant population groups and worked out political proposals that were renegotiated in the system apparatus.

Baroque

Social development suffered a setback as a result of the Thirty Years War . Social structures were broken and a social order had to be rebuilt. A socially disciplined society as a whole with its own conflict resolution mechanisms enabled a more moderate exercise of power and vice versa. Social discipline and the simultaneous differentiation of the system apparatus and society became an accompanying premise of the expanding absolutist power apparatus around 1700.

The social structure had been completely degenerated by the habit of abnormal excesses of violence of the armies passing through. A peaceful social cooperation as well as high civilizational standards had to be re-established. With the means of the early modern period, this meant the creation of a culture of beatings for the “masses” and a strict command structure. Everyday beating took place on the estates as well as in the army. Gradually this led to an increase in general employment intensity. Loitering around and being lazy was frowned upon, there was a kind of social compulsion to work . The busy society was prepared and made receptive to organizational innovations that were created at ever shorter intervals. The beating served as a means for a society that had not yet collectively acquired the civilizational maturity for other, softer forms of rule. At the individual level, this central approach meant suffering, victim experience and a poor quality of life. The northern neighbor, Brandenburg-Prussia , led the way in this development.

In a comparison of the rulership systems of the time of Electoral Saxony in the geographical neighborhood, the Electoral Saxon model of rulership was internally both more moderate and more institutionally developed. A consequence of stable rule was a low number of revolts and the lack of opposition confederation leagues , as often happened in Poland, for example. Gravamen or appellations were institutionally consciously enabled inputs that could enable an individual and corporate balance of interests . The Saxon state parliaments had the function of a premodern grouped representation of interests and enabled legitimation . After 1648 the number and size of the court festivals increased. Court offices tied the middle and lower nobility into the sovereign structures. The permanent institution of the Saxon Army , created at the end of the 17th century, made it possible for the young nobles to pursue a career as an officer within the sovereign structures. Their paths, energies and their focus were thereby directed into predetermined careers , conspiracies of the aristocratic class less likely, as one's own advancement and social advancement seemed more important for the individual noble officer personally. Through the creation of such institutions there was a possibility of employment and dedication for a growing number of people who could thus (guided) realize themselves. Commoners had access to administrative offices. The bourgeoisie was relatively little depressed and less hindered in economic development. Traits of serfdom existed only in the northern, peripheral areas of Kursachsen.

Finally, consensual resolutions, for example on laws and electoral decrees, were institutionalized. Since the 16th century, government action had increasingly shifted to written ordinances. As a result, a large part of the population was reached and the legislation made it possible to strive for equal treatment across the entire territory of Saxony. Written administrative action, well-managed archives, and control structures enabled the establishment of a bureaucratic culture of rule at an early stage. The predictability of the constellations of actors in transactions that began with correspondence stabilized the entire Saxon government and social system and alleviated the risk of frequent or chronically recurring phases of uprising.

Mainly through their orderly existence, the state structures organized a partial state-wide political balance, whereby individual external constellations of interests and actors were integrated and taken into account and state rule could be influenced by many levers. The coherence of the territory was thereby promoted and a tight and structured civil order made possible. The constellations of actors, especially the estates , the elector and the administration, were intertwined, actors acting independently had hardly any potential for change and therefore needed a broad base of support to achieve a political majority. If there was no broad support, as in Poland during the reign of August II , domestic reforms were blocked and failed. The electors tried to limit urban autonomy and sometimes intervened in urban events without any legal basis. However, they did not manage to fully control the cities.

Intergovernmental subsidy payments were a means of influencing interests in the early modern period. In the 17th century, Saxon princes repeatedly rented soldiers to foreign powers against payment of subsidies.

Enlightenment and absolutism

Golden rider in the night
Kennel 1709, the ladies' ring race during the Danish state visit to the fairground, the wooden predecessor of today's kennel, CHFritsche
The cosels , skirts, shells , and erotica strongly influenced political decisions under August II

Around 1700 special "orders" were created, which were supposed to create a special feeling of togetherness and being chosen among the members, mostly aristocrats. The Freemasonry moved to the scholarly circles but also in their orbits nobles.

Ceremonial and rituals as a political process intensified in the 18th century. The label , a type of access permission to the court of the ruler and the whole of the valid norms of behavior determined the circle of insiders to the inner power circle and the Ousidern, the excluded from the system of domination. This was expressed by official tables of rank , which determined the position of a person, an office at court. The farm grew rapidly, both in terms of personnel and material. The age of representation began: the Dresden Baroque . Highly complex systems of signs and condensed public communication permanently occupied possible opponents and other political actors of the elector. These got into a controlled political parallel world full of opulence and debauchery (symbol: Königsteiner Giant Barrel ), "magnifique" and extravagance , eros and phallus , pleasure camp, charisma ( femininity , composure , honnêteté ), gold leaf (for: superficiality, appearance, pomp ), Arrangements . Dynastic inheritance policy determined political events in the late baroque and early enlightenment . The French culture as imitated throughout Europe. The court acted as a trendsetter , cast a spell over “the beautiful, the mighty and the rich”. A sophisticated event management , the rumor mill and widespread scandals at court provided topics of conversation, reputation and centrality in the structure of the higher society that gradually formed around the court in Dresden. With all the effort, the ruler demonstrated his claims to power to the outside world and organized the distribution of power within society by including the elites from all areas of society in his courtly system. Competing parallel systems of a bourgeois nature, for example, did not yet come close to the level of court culture . The Augustan age was an absolutist success model of autocratic rule organization and security that shone far outwards .

From a social perspective, the Saxon population was already highly differentiated, changeable and transformable. The population development in Electoral Saxony was comparable to the western development direction and moved with it. Above all, this meant the emergence of a broader urban bourgeoisie and, with it, bourgeois institutions . However, the economic bourgeoisie did not succeed in developing their own self-confident class consciousness as in the Netherlands or England. The following social developments were shaped by the Enlightenment, but also by religious movements such as Lutheran Orthodoxy or Pietism around 1700. A form of social entrepreneurship developed around the Herrnhut Brethren . Social and private involvement from within society had a stabilizing effect on further development. The Leipzig Enlightenment is often seen in literature as a prototype of the bourgeois Enlightenment, that is, shaped by a city far from the court dominated by the commercial bourgeoisie.

The stability and adaptability of the Saxon federation of states received a significant boost through the institutionalization of the individual policy fields ( finance , foreign affairs , internal affairs , law , infrastructure , mining ). In the absence of a written constitution , the influencing of the actors was largely informal. Ordered lobbying structures, for example at the Saxon court, comparable to today's political agencies, did not yet exist. For this, a lackey and mistress culture developed under August II and a favoritism system under Brühl . Systemic corruption was part of government action. the attempts at containment made by the state by setting up control organs remained limited. In high absolutism, the court nobility also held an important informal political position.

Until the end of the electorate it retained its traditional feudal institutions. Towards the end, these were structured too narrowly and in too small parts and, from the late 18th century onwards, hampered further social development. In the course of proto-industrialization , for example, any guild organization had a negative effect on the formation of the productive forces . The rigid regional division with the various rural regional units and their privileges also hindered the reform process. Overall, the Saxon nobility fell into a crisis. The birthright and the noble system of privileges were no longer untouched.

The Enlightenment had developed new models for political rule. Montesquieu , Rousseau and Voltaire established foundations such as the separation of powers and the principle of popular sovereignty . The enlightened absolutism that was established after the reforms of the Restoration Commission under Thomas von Fritsch after the Seven Years' War lost its ability to integrate. The American Revolution also indirectly radiated into Saxony. At the end of the 18th century, a larger class of educated citizens had already formed who demanded political participation. The third stand also increasingly demanded participation in the political process. The feudal system could no longer absorb and react to these developments. The Saxon peasant uprising of 1790 in the course of the French Revolution led, as elsewhere, to the revolutionary events spilling over to Saxony and threatened the Saxon feudal elites. The Pillnitz Declaration tried to counteract this.

Corporate Actors

Acting global programs

The following programs had an overriding effect on course axes and determined the developments of the respective time. There was never an act of the electoral rulers that was detached from the general development. Saxony was part of a dense network of exchange relationships in Central Europe. Significant interfaces from all areas of society ran there. Logic of thought and value systems were adopted from the outside and imitated never initiated. One always adapted to the prevailing zeitgeist . The particular personal contribution of the Saxon rulers was that they took over the developments and adapted and did not shut themselves off beforehand. Electoral Saxony thus always retained a leading position in international development and, despite being imitated, became an engine of progress in socio-political development and a role model for other entities, such as Prussia . The actions of imitation on site resulted in gradual shading and the emergence of sub-variants of the model model, due to regional and personal peculiarities (e.g. Kuxe instead of shares).

At the level of society, people, organizations:

First floor
  • Secularization (regional church regiment, visitations)
  • Humanism (feelings, needs, state universities, princely schools, high schools, clip schools)
  • social differentiation (institutionalization, life planning, career)
  • Social discipline ( rationality , reform institutions, marching, uniforms, corporal punishment, standardization, rationalization, standardization, hierarchization)
  • Commercial revolution (stock exchange, trade fair, cashless payments, stocks)
  • Monetization (coinage, silver mining, public finance, money-commodity relationship)
  • Early modern state formation (authorities, legal codification, densification of rule, regulation, spatial penetration, information generation)
  • Military Revolution (Orange army reform, standing army, fortifications, armaments production, warehouses, armories, billeting)
  • Early bourgeois revolution (bourgeoisisation)
  • Absolutism (femininity, centralism, residential landscape, promotion of high culture and civilization)
  • Enlightenment (mind, I, personality, academy, scholars' associations, literary salons, journalistic public)
  • Mercantilism (manufacturing, customs, proto-industrialization, peuplication)
  • Cameralism (bureaucratization, political theory, professionalization, ethos)
second level
Third level (own programs)

See also

literature

To Electoral Saxony
  • Reiner Gross: History of Saxony, Edition Leipzig, special edition of the Saxon State Center for Civic Education Dresden / Leipzig 2012
On governance of the early modern state
  • Gunnar Folke Schuppert: Knowledge, Governance, Law .: From the cognitive dimension of law to the legal dimension of knowledge, Nomos Verlag, 2019

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion: Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires, Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, abstract p. 3
  2. ↑ Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion: Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires, Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, p. 5
  3. ↑ Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion: Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires, Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, p. 7
  4. ↑ Jörg Bogumil , Werner Jann : Administration and Administrative Science in Germany: Introduction to Administrative Science, Springer-Verlag, 2005, p. 140
  5. ↑ SFB-Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion. Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires , Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, to be read from the intro and the following pages
  6. ↑ Thomas Risse, Ursula Lehmkuhl: Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood: Comments on conceptual problems of the current governance discussion in: Marianne Beisheim, Gunnar Folke Schuppert, Marianne Beisheim, Gunnar Folke Schuppert (eds.), Staatszerfall und Governance, pp. 144-160 , 1st edition 2007, series: Writings on Governance Research, Vol. 7, p. 144
  7. ↑ Alexander Schunka: Guests who remain: Immigrants in Kursachsen and Upper Lusatia in the 17th and early 18th centuries, LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, p. 83
  8. ↑ Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion: Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires, Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, p. 6
  9. ^ Karlheinz Blaschke: Contributions to the constitutional and administrative history of Saxony: selected essays, Volume 5 of writings on Saxon history and folklore, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2002, p. 514
  10. ↑ Gunnar Folke Schuppert: Knowledge, Governance, Law .: From the cognitive dimension of law to the legal dimension of knowledge, Nomos Verlag, 2019, p. 132
  11. ↑ Martina Schattkowsky: Between manor, residence and empire: the living environment of the Saxon nobleman Christoph von Loss auf Schleinitz (1574–1620), Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007, p. 13
  12. ↑ Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion: Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires, Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, p. 8
  13. ↑ Dominik Nagl / Marion Stange: Statehood and Governance in the Age of European Expansion: Administrative Structures and Institutions of Power in the British and French Colonial Empires, Governance Working Paper Series, No. 19, February 2009, p. 9
  14. ^ Karlheinz Blaschke: Contributions to the constitutional and administrative history of Saxony: selected essays, Volume 5 of writings on Saxon history and folklore, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2002, p. 515
  15. ↑ Linda Brüggemann: Rule and Death in the Early Modern Age: The death and burial ceremony of Prussian rulers from the Great Elector to Friedrich Wilhelm II. (1688–1797), Herbert Utz Verlag, 2015, p. 44
  16. ↑ Martina Schattkowsky: Between manor, residence and empire: the living environment of the Saxon nobleman Christoph von Loss auf Schleinitz (1574-1620), Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007, p. 12