Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


The Sleeping Sovereign

The Sleeping Sovereign

The Sleeping Sovereign

The Invention of Modern Democracy
Richard Tuck, Harvard University, Massachusetts
April 2016
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Adobe eBook Reader
9781316427064

    Richard Tuck traces the history of the distinction between sovereignty and government and its relevance to the development of democratic thought. Tuck shows that this was a central issue in the political debates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and provides a new interpretation of the political thought of Bodin, Hobbes and Rousseau. Integrating legal theory and the history of political thought, he also provides one of the first modern histories of the constitutional referendum, and shows the importance of the United States in the history of the referendum. The book derives from the John Robert Seeley Lectures delivered by Richard Tuck at the University of Cambridge in 2012, and will appeal to students and scholars of the history of ideas, political theory and political philosophy.

    • Integrates legal theory and the history of political thought
    • Offers new interpretations of major theorists such as Hobbes and Rousseau
    • Reinterprets the history of modern democratic thought

    Reviews & endorsements

    'Richard Tuck is justly known for innovative, deeply contextual scholarship that manages to revise our ordinary ways of looking at the history of political thought. His new book does not disappoint. Indeed, I warmly commend it. … offers the reader a commanding metaphor for rethinking how modern democracy was 'invented'.' Michael Mosher, The Review of Politics

    See more reviews

    Product details

    April 2016
    Adobe eBook Reader
    9781316427064
    0 pages
    0kg
    This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.

    Table of Contents

    • Preface
    • 1. Jean Bodin
    • 2. Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf
    • 3. The eighteenth century
    • 4. America
    • Conclusion
    • Index.
      Author
    • Richard Tuck , Harvard University, Massachusetts

      Richard Tuck is the author of Natural Rights Theories (Cambridge, 1979), Hobbes (1989), Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651 (Cambridge, 1993), The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (1999) and Free Riding (2008). He is the editor of standard editions of Hobbes and Grotius, and the author of many scholarly articles on the history of political thought and political philosophy. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was a fellow for twenty-six years before moving to Harvard University, Massachusetts. He has been invited to give many series of lectures, including the Carlyle Lectures at the University of Oxford, the Benedict Lectures at Boston University, and the Seeley Lectures at the University of Cambridge. At Harvard University he has served as the Chair of the Social Studies Program since 2006.