Dipartimento di Politiche Pubbliche e Scelte Collettive – POLIS Department of Public Policy and Public Choice – POLIS

Working paper n. 98

October 2007

Pre-modern covenant and covenantalism in Daniel Judah Elazar's

federalist elaboration

Corrado Malandrino

UNIVERSITA’ DEL PIEMONTE ORIENTALE “Amedeo Avogadro” ALESSANDRIA

Periodico mensile on-line "POLIS Working Papers" - Iscrizione n.591 del 12/05/2006 - Tribunale di Alessandria

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Corrado Malandrino

Pre-modern Covenant and Covenantalism in Daniel Judah Elazar’s

Federalist Elaboration

1. Foreword

Elazar was an American Jew born in Minneapolis in 1934, in a Sephardi family of ancient

Iberian origin. In order to escape the persecutions in the 16th century, his forebears emigrated

first to Italy and then to Salonika, later re-establishing themselves in Palestine in the 19th

century and eventually settling in America in the first half of the 20th century. He completed

his university education at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his M.A. and a Ph.D.

in 1957 and 1959 respectively, defending dissertations on the American federalist

constitutionalism and the relationship between the Federal government and State

governments. After holding the position of Assistant Professor for some years at the

University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois, and the University of Michigan, he was

appointed to the Department of Political Sciences at Temple University in Philadelphia in

1964. Steeped in Jewish culture (he died in Israel in December 1999, in Jerusalem), Elazar

maintained dual allegiance and residence in the United States and Israel throughout his life,

rapidly rising to the status of a high-profile reference point in the sphere of political science in

both countries, as well as becoming a renowned figure in studies on federalism and in the

Jewish cultural and political tradition.

An interesting overview of the main areas of Elazar’s scientific interests is available on the

website of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs1, which hosts the Daniel Elazar on-line

Library featuring a network diagram with the main areas of his activity. The first column

features, from top to bottom, the following boxes: “American Political Culture”,

“Federalism”, “The Idea of Covenant”. The second column has: “Jewish Political Tradition:

Biblical Studies. Jewish Political Thought”, “Jewish Community Studies”, and “Israel-

Diaspora Relations”. Finally, in the third column one finds: “Israel: Constitution, Government

and Politics”, “Israel and the Middle-East”, and “Religion and Society”. These references

suffice to illustrate the broad range of Elazar’s fields of research. In over 45 years in the world

of publishing, Elazar published or edited over 60 books and 1,300 fundamental articles and

1 Cf. http://www.jcpa.org/dje/aboutdje.htm.

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essays, achieving considerable success with his works. On several occasions, he was called

upon to act in an advisory capacity for the public administration offices of several countries

(above all for the governments of Israel and the United States) and also for trans-national

organizations. After founding the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University in

1967 (and also, in the same milieu, “Publius”, one of the leading journals on federalism), in

1970 he set up and for many years was the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public

Affairs at Bar-Ilan University of Jerusalem, where he held numerous teaching positions and

was eventually awarded the title of Professor Emeritus. In 1986, president Ronald Reagan

appointed Elazar as a member of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations,

the major intergovernmental agency dealing with problems of federalism, on which he served

for several terms. In the 1980s and 1990s Elazar founded and/or was an active member of a

number of internationally acclaimed study and research organizations such as the

International Association of Centers for Federal Studies, the Israel Political Science

Association, and the American Political Science Association. In addition, he became an

acknowledged world-level expert on Jewish history and culture, and was awarded numerous

recognitions and honours which led him to assume a leading role in several American,

Australian, and Israeli organizations forming part of organized Hebraism and Zionism.

This contribution seeks to provide an in-depth examination, adopting a perspective that looks

back through earlier historical eras, into a crucial offshoot of research springing from the

framework of study on the origins of federalism of the early modernity (frühe Neuzeit). The

focus of this enquiry is the reading of federalism as a “grand design” outlined in a number of

articles and books by Daniel J. Elazar2, in which considerable importance is awarded to the

concept of “federal covenant” (pactum, foedus, Bund, pact), regarded as an element of the

theological-federal tradition3. Thus when attempting to address the issue of the forms of pre-

2 Cf. Daniel J. Elazar (with John Kincaid), The Covenant Connection: Federal Theology and the Origins of Modern Politics, Durham N. C., Carolina Academic Press, 1985 (cf. by the same editors, the collection entitled The Covenant Connection: from Federal Theology to Modern Federalism, Elazar and Kincaid, eds., Lanham, Maryland, Lexington Books, 1999); Id., Exploring Federalism, Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1987, in particular pp. 129-131, focusing on Althusius’ «early federalism», and the «postmodern» interpretation suggested in general in the work and in the seventh chapter entitled Will the Postmodern Epoch Be an Era of Federalism?, pp. 223-265; cf. also the introduction to Federalism as a Grand Design: Political Philosophers and the Federal Principle (1979), ed. by D. J. Elazar, Lanham, University Press of America, 1987, pp. 1-11; Id., The Multi-faceted Covenant: the Biblical Approach to the Problem of Organizations, Constitutions, and Liberty as Reflected in the Thought of J. Althusius, «Constitutional Political Economy», II, 1991, 2, pp. 187-223. 3 On this aspect cf. Corrado Malandrino, Teologia federale, “Il Pensiero Politico”, XXXII, 1999, n. 3, pp. 427-446; Id., Politische Theorie und Föderaltheologie, in Jurisprudenz, Politische Theorie und politische Theologie,

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modern politics, it is interesting to analyse the evolution of Elazar’s concepts of the covenant

and pre-modern covenantalism. These political ideas are argued by Elazar to represent an

important mode of ancient and Medieval political thought and practice. This holds in

particular for certain populations such as the Jews, the Celts, the Germanic tribes and the

Anglo-Saxons, all of whom played an important role in the formation of modern Western

civilization. Furthermore, according to the theory put forward by Elazar, since the concepts of

covenant and covenantalism originated from distant ages, they acted as a fundamental guiding

thread for theorization of the theological-federal “covenant” during the Reformation; in later

centuries, although undergoing profound changes, they would lay the groundwork for the

formation of modern American federalism and more generally of Western federalist thought.

2. Federalism as a “grand design”

In the work Exploring Federalism, Elazar espouses a vision of federalism – which he

considered the supreme form of an activity based on covenantalism – as “revolution” and as a

“grand design” destined to provide effective local, supranational, and world-wide solutions to

the political and institutional issues springing from the crisis of the post-modern age. In this

book, research on the ancient, medieval, and modern covenant is perfectly integrated. The

covenant is presented as a concept forming the cornerstone of Elazar’s entire philosophical

and political construction.

In Elazar’s view, the modern era – extending from the mid 17th century to the middle of 20th

century – is mainly characterized by the activities of its main players, “the sovereign reified

and centralised states”, otherwise known as “the nation-states”, which have increasingly been

whittled down to a function that could be compared to the mythical “procrustean bed”4 (the

allusion being to the thief killed by Theseus, who was famous for adapting his victims to the

size of his bed by amputating the excess length of their body). Similarly, over these three

centuries, the sovereign national States have sacrificed their minority components – ethnic,

linguistic, autonomist and territorial, or other minorities – that do not conform to the ideal

image of nationality, an ideal which, however, hardly ever corresponds to a natural, objective,

and peaceable relationship with the territory occupied by the given nation. According to ed. by F. S. Carney, H. Schilling and D. Wyduckel, Berlin, Duncker & Humblot 2004, pp. 123-142. On the various declinations of the concept of pact in federal theology and in Althusius cf. Il lessico della Politica di Johannes Althusius. L’arte della simbiosi santa giusta vantaggiosa e felice, ed. by F. Ingravalle and C. Malandrino, Florence, Olschki, 2005, pp. 187-202 and 311-324.

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Elazar’s definition, postmodernity is the age of the decline of this form of the state, as a result

of its inability to govern the difficulties arising from the new awareness of ethnicity as well as

from autonomist demands on the domestic front, from conflicts among States at the

international level, and from the new environmental, technical, and scientific problems that

are making themselves felt at a worldwide level.

Thus in the postmodern era, Elazar argues, new institutional models of government have

arisen, which “have moved simultaneously in two directions: on the one hand the creation of

political units which are both larger and smaller and are intended to accomplish different

goals, thus obtaining either economic or strategic advantages, and on the other, the aim of

maintaining the original community at the same time in order to better fulfil the needs of the

different ethnical groups. These configurations entail the idea of a variety of governments

wielding power over the same territory. This idea, which is the core of the American

invention of federalism, [is] a heresy to the European fathers of the modern nation State”5.

Expressed in these terms, Elazar’s statements effectively reiterate the ineluctability of radical

criticism of the concept of the sovereign nation-state as theorized by Bodin or Hobbes at the

outset of the modern age. Elazar writes: “Therefore, the federal principle represents an

alternative to (and a radical attack on) the modern idea of sovereignty. The latter [had]

become so deeply ingrained in the general mode of reasoning that even debates over

federalism were expressed in terms of sovereignty, particularly in the 19th century, leading to

an inevitable distortion of the concept of federalism. In the postmodern era, however, the

notion of state sovereignty has become obsolete”6. This conception of postmodernity, which

does not entail the resurgence of pre-modern ideas, favours an interest in thinkers and social

institutions that were marginalized by the triumph of the modern state. The federalist

revolution will be called upon to complete the grand design whose theoretical foundations

were originally conceived within the framework of ancient biblical federal theology; through

modernization and secularization of this ancient theology, the theoretical foundations have in

our day been applied to the postmodern era but with due respect for the modernity’s justified

demand for the centralization and efficiency of power. Briefly, the federalist revolution will

have to bring about “the concentration of power and authority in the hands of large and active

general governments, and – at the same time – diffuse the exercise of power so that many, if 4 Elazar, Exploring federalism, p. 223. 5 Ivi, p. 185.

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not all strata of society may be granted a constitutionally guaranteed share in government”7,

i.e. federal government at the national and trans-national levels, and local self-government

within a framework of political equality.

Federalism, evocatively defined by Elazar as “the comprehensive system of political

relationships which has to do with the combination of self-rule and shared rule whitin a matrix

of constitutionally dispersed powers”8, always has a political scope of influence that goes

beyond – but at the same time includes –the mere administrative notion of bureaucratic

decentralization as well as the limits of a constitutional and democratic conception of the

State according to the tradition of continental Europe. Basically, it is identified with a general

vision extending throughout the entire range of human relationships with the aim of achieving

this “grand design”, which is none other than the world order centred on the federal

cornerstone of covenantalism. “Comprehensiveness” represents one of the fundamental

characteristics of Elazar’s federalism in the sense that all aspects of social and political life are

intimately permeated by the theological-biblical federal “covenant”. It is no coincidence that

two authors subscribing to this school of thought, one at the onset of the modern age, namely

the Calvinist Althusius, and the second a writer and philosopher from the end of the modern

era, Martin Buber, seem to be his emblematic points of reference. Elazar highlights the close

relationship between Buber’s anarchic federalism and Althusius’s proto-federalism, an

affinity which is particularly noticeable in Buber’s Paths in Utopia (1950), where a prominent

role is played by the relation of identity established between the system of “autonomous

communities” theorized by Buber as a new fundamental of society, and the “co-operative

consociations”9 which are so similar to Althusius’s consociations. Just as Althusius is the

precursor of the federal idea –Elazar contends – so Buber may be acknowledged as the last

modern thinker to announce post-modern federalism. Resting on this ideal basis, the federalist

project aims to create a number of self-governing blocks or cells at different non-hierarchical

levels of society and state, from the lowest and smallest to the highest and largest, from local

6 Ivi, p. 90. 7 Ivi, p. 216. 8 Cf. Elazar, Federalism as a grand design, p. 1. 9 Cf. M. Buber, Sentieri in Utopia, Milan, Comunità, 1967, p. 171-172 (Italian translation of Pfade in Utopia, Heidelberg, Schneider, 1950). On Buber cf. Diego Quaglioni, “La “Politeia Biblica” in M. Buber,” in Politeia Biblica, ed. by Lea Campos Boralevi and Diego Quaglioni, “Il Pensiero Politico”, XXXV, 2002, 3, pp. 501-521.

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communities to inter-regional and supranational federations, up to the world federal

republic.10

It should be borne in mind that Elazar’s constitutional and federal conception forms a uniform

and integrated whole, developing from his reading of the covenant and from the movement of

political thought and action that was grounded in the practice of the covenant, which Elazar

terms covenantalism. In Elazar’s interpretation, covenantalism covers a period starting from

ancient times, stretching through the Mediaeval and modern age and continuing up to the

10 Pragmatically Elazar concedes that in this process (as in the more general federal matrix) one may find confederal forms coexisting with veritable federal forms (cf. D. J. Elazar, Constitutionalizing globalization. The post-modern revival of confederal arrangements, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, p. 60). The confederal and coooperative forms, with which transnational and global institutions can be constructed at the various levels, can in any case be conceived as a step forwards towards world federalism, provided that they prove capable of offering answers to the three great issues emerging from globalization, which pertain to security, economic integration and protection of human rights. Once again, in his view what is crucially important is to realize that the postmodern era has truly begun, on account of the irreversible crisis of the form of the modern state as we have known it so far, i.e. of the so-called “Westphalia model”, the state that enjoyed exclusive sovereignty. But this crisis does not imply its immediate disappearance: it is more a question of the decline of this statal form as a result of its inability to cope with difficulties arising on the domestic front, such as the demands of ethnic groups or the call for independence or devolution launched by various groups, or on the supranational level due to conflicts among states, or in terms of environmental and technical-scientific problems at the worldwide level. In the postmodern world – as suggested by the catch phrase “from statism to federalism” and in the wake of a generalized, concrete and evident tendency to confederalism, of which Elazar perceives and describes numerous examples – institutional models will have to move towards the federal model. In this regard, it will be necessary to adopt a rather wide and elastic interpretation of federalism, in such a manner as to admit the inclusion of confederal forms, while retaining its founding theoretical core in the form derived from the Federalist, although Elazar feels that in the end this form is more suited to continental contexts of greater cultural and historical homogeneity. What is important, Elazar contends, is to respect “the combination of constitutional choices, of a well thought-out project and institutional construction in order to bring together the existing States and transnational associations in a federalist manner, that is to say, to combine self-government with shared government, in order to guarantee that the shared government is restricted to the functions that are absolutely necessary or clearly of use for the governments and peoples involved” (ivi, p.3). This means that at supranational, transnational and global levels it will be necessary to establish a permanent political and institutional framework, with its own headquarters, to deal with matters concerning the centralization and decentralization of powers; at the same time, however, it must be ensured that the framework set up at each of these levels is in no way an alternative to common goals, but rather is coordinated and in harmony with such goals. Only thus will it become possible, in Elazar’s view, to enable mankind to make a fresh start, moving away from profit-oriented world dominion designed to further brutal economic interests, leaving behind national aggression and bloody wars, and turning instead to a democratic global order based on broader extension of the federal princiuple of shared government. The European example, Elazar argues, demonstrates that these ideas are well-founded. Only after the onset of the postmodern era and the obsolescence of the conception of state sovereignty has a new perspective opened up in which “the glorification of the nation state has run its course”, and even in Europe it is now feasible to embark on the process of integration which must be conceived, Elazar believes, in a prospect of confederal-federal development, thus representing a logical and historical evolution. This can also be understood as a struggle between opposed political positions that were linked to these terms in the 1980s and 1990s, and which culminated in the Treaty of Maastricht. In Elazar’s view, the functionalist formulation of community integration which prevailed in the early 1950s, after the defeat of the federalist project, had the historical goal of averting at the very origin any risk that European integration might be perceived as a threat to the member States; it also had the goal of creating a valid basis of ever more tight-meshed economic and institutional integration. Eventually, however, it also set in motion an objective movement characterised by a longer-term perspective and loftier ambitions.

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present age, the latter being referred to as post-modern. But the core of the covenant tradition

is the “federal theology” of the Reformation which took shape between the 16th and the 17th

century; in Elazar’s works this phrase sometimes alternates with “covenant theology” in order

to underline that the adjective “federal” effectively derives from the Latin term foedus, “a

pact”, which in English is mainly rendered by covenant ( but also by pact, compact, or

contract – although Elazar draws important distinctions among these terms, which I will

illustrate in greater detail later).

On the basis of an original and complex acceptation of covenant (and of covenantalism,

which, in Elazar’s framework, is a veritable descriptive and prescriptive category since it is a

mode and a movement of some political societies which show a tendency to express and

establish themselves in history through the covenant), Elazar develops a complete and

coherent interpretation of the history of Western politics and political thought, from ancient

times to the postmodern age. In expounding his thought, he also offers a vision of federalism

which does not coincide with the undifferentiated and acritical framework outlined by non

specialists; nor can it be identified with the excessively rigid framework proposed by those

(e.g. the theorists of “European federalism”) who link it to criticism of the modern state and

national sovereignty11, and therefore to the rise of “true” American federalism and to debate

on the distinction between federation and confederation that has become familiar above all

within German legal culture. Rather, Elazar aims to demonstrate that federalism – above and

beyond the genuine contribution of modernity provided by the 1787-88 American Federalist

model, which Elazar himself fully acknowledges – has at all times been, and will always be,

essentially founded on an more ancient inspiration rooted in the tradition (“in the stream”, to

use Elazar’s words) of the covenant shaped by the pact rather than by hierarchy.

Elazar confirms that the covenant is at the heart of federalism, as is made clear by his research

conducted along two lines of development, one focused on the Jewish biblical tradition and its

reception within reformed theology, and the other centring on American federalism starting

from the colonial origins. These two paths, on which Elazar had reflected from as early as

1970, meet and merge in the covenantal tradition12. The political ambition of this federal and

theological orientation based on contractualism, Elazar maintains, was to further the cause of 11 On this aspect the reader is referred to C. Malandrino, Sovranità nazionale e pensiero critico federalista. Dall’Europa degli Stati all’unione federale possibile, in “Quaderni Fiorentini”, 2002, n. 31, Tome I, pp. 169-244.

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republicanism at the dawn of the modern age, in opposition to absolutism. And even though it

was expressed in modes typical of its times and thus through forms which were more

oligarchic than democratic, it ultimately led to the foundation of the “federal democracy”. In

the introduction to his work on the covenant connection, Elazar dwells at length on the

influence of federal theology on the thought and action of the American settlers between the

17th and the 18th century; in his view, it was federal theology which constituted the ideal

bridge between the biblical conception of the covenant and its rendition in the 18th-century

terms of modern federalism.

3. The covenant according to Elazar’s interpretation in general

It is therefore necessary to define the covenant according to the terminological, philological,

and historical acceptation put forward by Elazar. He devoted many years to study of such

aspects, not always engaging in research as a solitary pursuit, since he strongly believed in the

value of group culture and was active in the promotion of events devoted to the organization

of structured seminars and research centres. For instance, it is worth quoting the long

experience of the “Workshop on Covenant and Politics” which, extending over five years

from 1977 to 1982, generated extensive study and discussion meetings at the Center for the

Study of Federalism at Temple University in Philadelphia. Much of the material produced

during those years was published in works by Elazar himself and other researchers.13 Among

these publications, the four-volume survey on the covenant by Elazar (over 2,000 pages) is

extremely significant.14

It is in this work that one finds a detailed elaboration on the historical and theoretical meaning

of both covenant and covenantalism. In present-day English, this word means “pact”,

“convention”, “agreement” (also in reference to financial agreements although – curiously -

mainly in connection with obligations morally assumed towards philanthropic and charitable

organizations). Therefore it is nowadays used interchangeably as a synonym for words such

12 As argued for instance in the study by C. S. McCoy and J. W. Baker, Fountainhead of federalism. H. Bullinger and the covenantal tradition, Louisville (Kentucky), Westminster/J. Knox Press, 1991. 13 Cf., among the results of this project, also the cit. The Covenant Connection: from Federal Theology to Modern Federalism. 14 Cf. D. J. Elazar, The Covenant Tradition in Politics , vol. I: Covenant & Polity in Biblical Israel; vol. II: Covenant and Commonwealth. From Christian Separation Through the Protestant Reformation; vol. III: Covenant and Constitution. The Great Frontier and the Matrix of Federal Democracy; vol. IV: Covenant and Civil Society. The Constitutional Matrix of Modern Democracy, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick (USA) and London (UK), 1995-1999.

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as pact, compact, contract. This is not, however, its original meaning, as Elazar points out, nor

that which was its prevailing acceptation, historically speaking, during the Middle Ages and

early modernity. He observes that the literal root, implicit in covenant, derives from the

phrase ‘coming together’, which can be likened to the Latin con-venire (which he also renders

with con-gregation) and is applicable both physically and intellectually. Politically, the idea of

the covenant (a term used by theologians and legal scholars prior long before its utilisation by

politicians) originally illustrates, in Elazar’s words, “a coming together of basically equal

humans who consent with one another through a morally binding pact supported by a

transcendent power, establishing with the partners a new framework or setting them on the

road to a new task, and which can be dissolved only by a mutual agreement of all the parties

to it”15. Covenant is, Elazar confirms, the most ancient among the words dealing with the

formation of the political order through consent shown by means of a pact or a similar and

suitable mutual bond.16 The word was used primarily with this meaning until the age of the

Reformation. From the 17th century onwards, other terms such as compact and contract came

into use, but Elazar maintains that such words are not free from ambiguity if used as

synonyms for the first term or for one another. For while covenant and compact have since

their outset been mainly related to public and constitutional law, the original character of the

term “contract” was rooted in private law. Covenant and compact, once ratified, become a

broad and bilateral mutual obligation, which can be either elastic or rigid depending on the

circumstances and which goes beyond the letter of a legal contract – the latter being more

closely linked to a formal document that may provide only for unilateral obligations along

with sanctions. Even in the case of rescission, both covenant and compact need bilateral

consent (which therefore makes rescinding more difficult), whereas contracts need only a

unilateral clause, if the contract itself provides for one.

In contrast, the difference between covenant and compact is subtler. Elazar argues that the

covenant has greater moral strength in forging a bond among humans, inasmuch as it draws

its authority from God, and it maintains this feature even after the secularization process that

15 Cf. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth. From Christian Separation Through the Protestant Reformation, cit., p. 1. 16 Cf. Elazar, Exploring federalism, p. 4: “Covenantal foundings emphasize the deliberate coming together of humans as equals to establish bodies politic in such a way that all reaffirm their fundamental equality and retain their basic rights. Even the Hobbesian covenant – and he specifically uses that term – which establishes a polity in which power is vested in a single sovereign maintains this fundamental equality although, in practice, it cannot coexist with the system of rule that Hobbes requires”.

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was set in motion by modernity. The compact, on the other hand, derives its strength as a

unitary bond from an act that that more properly belongs to the legal and political framework;

it is a term which indicates a secularized phenomenon. By examining the American case,

Elazar notes that the former term was widely used in the early colonial age up to the mid 18th

century, whereas the latter became popular along with the Enlightenment culture during the

revolutionary war of independence. As for the meaning of contract, this was a term which, in

its acceptation as pertaining to public law, was imported into America in the wake of the

popularity of Rousseau’s contrat social after the French Revolution.

In short, covenant is the term used by many English-speaking authors, theologians and

politicians to translate expressions derived from the Jewish and the Christian Bible in

reference to the pact of alliance between God and mankind and, on the basis of this model,

among men: it is Jewish berith which is correctly rendered with the Greek syntheke and the

Latin foedus.17 Elazar contends that the covenants of the Bible underlie the greater part of

ancient and Mediaeval constitutionalism, and thus of the federal political theology of

reformed Protestantism; through the subsequent secularization process wherein Locke’s

works played a pivotal role, the underlying Biblical stream then laid the groundwork for

modern Western constitutional civilization.18 This came about through the existence of a

covenantal stream which, issuing from the Jewish biblical tradition, lived on “underground or

semisubmerged” and eventually, after a number of transformations during ancient Christian

times and the Middle Ages, flowed into reformed Protestantism (the covenant, in Elazar’s

view, represents the architectural scaffold of the Reformation). Subsequently, it influenced

early modernity, on the one hand through the religious experience of Calvinist and Puritan

federal theology, and through Locke’s secularized contractualist theory on the other. In this

manner, the concept of covenant also became the theoretical basis for the republican

commonwealth.19

4. The pre-modern covenant according to Elazar’s reading

The ancient covenant as a political idea closely linked to the federal theology, yet distinct

from the latter with regard to its historical development, is characterized by two successive

17 On the use of the term foedus in federal theology and in Althusius the reader is referred to C. Malandrino, Foedus (confoederatio), in Il lessico della Politica di Johannes Althusius, cit., p. 187-202. 18 Cf. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 3. 19 Ivi, p. 47.

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but separate Biblical phases. The first (starting from the era of Genesis, the pacts with Noah,

Abraham, and Moses, and continuing up to the pacts between the twelve tribes of Israel and

their kings) was berith acting within Jewish society; it then issued into Christianity – between

late ancient times and the Middle Ages – in the form of foedus or testamentum, as it appears

in the Catholic interpretation, which, Elazar suggests, is imprecise and potentially misleading.

A thread of continuity can be perceived among these experiences. Elazar’s research proposes,

ideally, “not only to trace the interconnections between ideas, culture and behaviour, but

between peoples and generations as well, to follow the path of the covenant idea and

covenantal cultures and behaviour in time and space”20. However, since this universalistic

aim is materially impossible, its avowed aim is restricted to charting “those critical elements

that [of the covenant] shaped history and civilization, particularly in the Western world”.

Naturally, Elazar is aware that in Patristic and Mediaeval Christian political culture the idea of

the covenant as an instrument for the creation of political bodies and political practices

represented a minority position, often marginal with respect to the predominant hierarchical

and organic principle that moulded the development of the Medieval res publica christiana in

its religious and political institutional expressions. However, he painstakingly gathers together

all the passages which, in historical documents and authors such as the Venerable Bede or

Manegold of Lautenbach, led Christian societies in Western countries towards covenantal

forms or infused them with widespread covenantal characteristics. Within this broad historical

vision, the 13th century represents the climax of the expressions of covenantalism,

distinguished as it was, at its very outset, by the English Magna Charta (1215) and, straddling

the 13th and the 14th centuries, by the solemn Grütli declaration of the Conjuratio Helvetica

(1291) and the Scottish Arbraoth declaration (1320) – the latter being the “charter” which

brought the heroic cycle of Scottish independence to an end.

Elazar’s conviction is that in the course of history, there have been peoples and societies who

have overwhelmingly shown a disposition towards the practice of the covenant (the Jews, the

Celts, various Germanic tribes, the Scots), who make up what he terms the exclusive

covenantalism “club”. However, he believes that a psychological propensity to such contract-

based relationships is common to the whole of mankind, albeit to a lesser degree. It prompts

the stipulation of transnational agreements based on the mutual character of conditions and

obligations. At times such propensity includes certain degrees of covenantalism, underpinned

20 Ivi, p. X.

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first and foremost by the original religious and moral connotation ,though in due course this

has become increasingly secularized and may be perceived as a position half-way between the

extremes of pure covenantalism and the hierarchical and organic model which, in its turn, is

embodied in either monarchic and centralist or imperial political typologies.

4.1. The covenant in the Biblical polity

The first volume of Elazar’s research, Covenant & Polity in Biblical Israel, is entirely devoted

to a historical and sociological description of the Biblical covenant – the berith, or brit – in its

many expressions, which for reasons of space fall outside the scope of this paper. This part of

the his study adds a new and important contribution to research on the “Biblical politeia”21,

and the general function of the berith within the vision of the world in Jewish political

thought is underlined in summary sketched by Elazar’s himself:

“The family of tribes descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that God raised up to be a

nation (goy), became the Jewish people (Am Yisrael) through its covenant (brit) with God

which, in turn, laid the basis for the establishment of the Jewish commonwealth (edah) under

Divine sovereignty (malkhut shamayim) and hence bound by the Divine constitutional

teaching (Torah). The am so created must live as a community of equals (kahal) under the

rule of law (hukah, hok) which applies to every citizen (ezrah), defined as a partner to the

covenant (ben-brit). Every citizen is linked to his neighbour (rea) by covenant obligation.

Within these parameters there is wide latitude in choosing the form of government or regime

as long as the proper relationships between the varous parties referred to above are preserved.

That, in turn, requires a system of shared authorities (reshuyot), what today would be termed

checks and balances. These reshuyot are combined under three authoritative categories

(ketarim): the authority of Torah (Keter Torah); the authority of civil governance (Keter

Malkhut) and the authority of the priesthood (Keter Kehunah), each of which plays a role in

the government of the edah through a system of shared powers. At any given time, different

21 Cf. Politeia Biblica, ed. by L. Campos Boralevi and D. Guaglioni, cit. En passant, it is worth pointing out that the Elazarian reconstruction appears here and there to be less attentive to the philological approach to the texts, and oriented more towards a “politological” comparison and contrast of his own hypotheses and arguments with the cited biblical references, cf. for ex. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 27, the Pauline citations and those from the Acts of the Apostles, which do not always seem to be germane to the issue. However, I think that taken as a whole, this philologically “light” approach, although debatable, does not seriously undermine the general hypothesis of his research.

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religious and political camps (mahanot) and parties (miflagot) whitin those camps compete

for control of the governing institutions of the edah”22.

In this conception, the function of the berith-covenant-pactum is threefold. First, it ensures the

bilateral relationship between God and the people of Israel; second, it founds communitarian

and egalitarian relationships among the members; lastly, it regulates the relationship

composed of mutual obligations between the people and those who govern them under the

rule of law, laying down that the guiding principle underlying the actions of those in power

should at all times be the implementation of justice.

4.2. The covenant in the Christian biblical culture

As compared to this position of the berith-covenant in Jewish history, Elazar suggests that

during the early centuries of the Christian era a major innovation occurred, which he terms

“separation-transformation”. This took the shape of a new formulation of the Jewish doctrine

on the covenant, carried out mainly by St. Paul and the Fathers of the Church, among whom

one may include the outstanding figures of St. Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin,

and St. Augustine. In order to fully understand this renewal, Elazar writes, it is necessary to

keep in mind and draw a careful distinction between contractualism of Greek and Roman

origin (Sophists, Epicureans, Stoics, Roman law and political thought), which was based on

the concept of the pact-contract of private law or grounded on purely philosophical and

political aspects, versus covenantalism of Jewish origin which, as noted earlier, has a broader

and more cogent cultural and religious character.

Indeed it was not long before the undoubted – although marginal – pact-based tendencies that

can be discerned in Greek and Roman culture were incorporated into what Elazar refers to as

the “hierarchical and organic principle”. By this term, he refers mainly to political naturalism

originating from Greek classical philosophy (Aristotelian in particular)23. This theoretical

framework ultimately became an intrinsic element of the Roman experience as well. Its

fundamental tenets held that political communities are created by virtue of an objective and

natural human tendency to build political societies, and are structured along an institutional,

hierarchical axis at different levels of obligations and obedience. This concept stands in stark

22 Cf. Elazar, Covenant & Polity in Biblical Israel, cit., p. 440. 23 Although he notes (cf. Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 40) that the Church often oscillated between the Platonic unitary and stratified model and a mixed pluralistic Aristotelian model.

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contrast to the above-mentioned Jewish political vision based on the covenant, which has its

cornerstone in the egalitarian pact-based character of its institution.

In what way do the theological and political elaborations by Paul, Jerome, and Augustine

relate to this alternative between Jewish covenantalism and the hierarchical and organic

naturalistic principle? If we were to offer an extreme summary of Elazar’s theory, his claim is

that even primitive Christianity was intrinsically covenantal inasmuch as it translated the

Jewish tradition by drawing on the concept of the pact as a “new alliance” in Christ and

through Christ, an alliance that fulfils for all eternity the promise of the old Mosaic covenant

and indeed exceeds it. Seen from the perspective of Christianity of the origins, it thus

becomes the central proposition in the history of salvation, both from the religious and the

political point of view, in the sense that life in its entirety – the life of political communities as

well – must be understood within this context. St. Paul, who uses the concept of koinonia to

designate a pact-based community – distinguishes between the covenant of works (which, by

virtue of the old pact entered into by Adam and renewed by Noah, includes the covenant

governing the lives of the pagans, Letters to the Romans, I: 19-20; Acts, 17: 26-27) and the

covenant of grace (which, by contrast, is the covenant of Christians). Patristics, from

Augustine to Ireneus, Tertullian, Lactantius and Eusebius, continued to emphasize three main

covenants: that of Noah, or the primordial, natural pact which involves all mankind; that of

Moses, i.e. the ancient pact, involving the Jewish people only; the Christian or new pact,

which likewise potentially involves the whole of mankind.24 It should be noted that this

structuring tended to affect mainly the life of religious communities and had little influence

on the organization of political communities. However, according to Elazar, the model was

revived during the Middle Ages thanks to the work of the monastic institutions created by

deliberate choice and through a pact among individuals who chose to live in communities of a

federative type. In this way, the patristic approach endured to some extent even during the

Christian era.

But Elazar then goes on to add that the increasing complexities of management of the Roman

imperial heritage and the growing need for a compromise with the Roman-Germanic situation

from the 5th century onwards led to a gradual shift in emphasis; furthermore, an increasing

24 Ivi, p. 31. It should be pointed out that in this regard there is a link between Elazar and the studies by C. J. Friedrich, Trends of Federalism: the Theory and Practice, New York, F. A. Praeger, 1968 and by J. Wayne Baker, H. Bullinger on the Covenant: the Other Reformed Tradition, Athens (Ohio), Ohio University Press, 1980.

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tension within Roman Catholicism, which aspired to endow the ecclesia and the political

body with a hierarchical structure25, prompted the great Popes and the Doctors of the Church

to begin to converge with the hierarchical and organic tradition of Greek and Roman political

culture that was also a feature of some Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths, the

Longobards, and the Franks. Thus the political structure based on the central role of

sovereignty of the Pope, Emperor, King or Prince ultimately prevailed in Mediaeval political

culture, and with this came the predominance of such themes as the swearing of the feudal

oath by a subject to his overlord, instead of the federative oath among free and equal men

and/or the communalistic oath. At this point, Elazar writes: “For more than a millennium in

Europe, the covenantal or federal model of civil society was largely supplanted by an organic-

pyramidal model embodied in the Corpus Christianum and representing a mix of imperial,

paternal, ecclesiastical and feudal governance. Although the system rarely worked in full

accord with the model, and the Church was, de facto, obligated to enter into contractual

relationships, establish concordats with civil authorities, and sanction political federations

from time to time, the dominant ideal of a Holy Roman Empire remained organic rather than

federal”26. The supreme definition of this march of the Church towards a hierarchical and

organic systematization is to be found in the Thomist Summa, which however does not

discard the original covenantal inspiration deriving from the Mosaic politia: rather, it builds

up a mixed constitutional solution which Elazar refers to as “federalistic-hierarchical”27, a

formula which can mediate between the organicism of feudalism and the constitutional

pyramid of power represented by the Church and the Holy Roman Empire.

5. The Mediaeval covenant: hierarchical-organic principle vs. covenantal “federalism”

Elazar underlines that despite the predominance of hierarchical, organic approaches to the

political framework, throughout the early and later medieval period there still persisted

cultures, authors and forms of collective behaviour that reproduced, albeit with varying

degrees of intensity, the genuine covenantal propensity present not only in the Jewish

tradition, but also in primitive Christianity, where it was blended with Celtic and Germanic

25 This tendency is also revealed, according to Elazar, in the question of the translation of the term berith by the Greek word diatheke and by the Latin term testamentum. In his view, both these terms highlight the figure entitled to transmit the pact, rather than the practice and the subjects of the pact. 26 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., pp. 40-41. 27 Ivi, p. 35.

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cultural attitudes that were centred on pact-based political practices and on a common oath:

“It was a blend of Roman contractualism inherited from the early Roman republic and the

Germanic oath culture which, even when binding, brought unequals a measure of

equalization. The feudal synthesis embraced one dimension of contract law, namely, the

Roman conception of quasi contract. Feudal oaths were interpreted as resting upon this

concept and whatever medieval constitutionalism provided in the way of political guarantees

stems from it”28. These mergers represent a sort of bridge leading in to the grand revival of

this tradition during the XVIth century Protestant Reformation.

But which elements, specifically, embody references to the medieval expressions of the oath

and the pact? Which authors, and which documents, are mentioned? Elazar offers a wide-

ranging survey of expressions, in a slightly rhapsodic manner, acknowledging that it is not so

much a question of complete and systemic theoretical elaborations as, rather, individual

statements – some of which not devoid of significance - occurring here and there within

thoughts and documents that historical interpretation has so far treated in the context of

problems other than covenantalism.29

In this sense, the Elazarian reconstruction of the premodern covenant assigns to a secondary

position many of the categories and concepts we are accustomed to ranking among the

leading aspects of medieval and modern thought: for example, the problem of sovereignty

(plenitudo potestatis, majestas), or the figure of the holder of sovereignty in the context of the

long-standing struggle between the papacy, kings and emperors, which represented one of the

classic themes of investigation into political Augustinianism, from Pope Gelasius I to

Boniface VII, or the problem of the education of the ruler, from the specula principum to

treatises on the Raison d’État. Instead, a prime position is assigned to the concept of the

covenant, which is seen in relation to the tendencies of some peoples, at certain crucial points

in history, to unite politically and institutionally by entering into pacts and taking oaths.

5.1. The experience of the Communes (Italy and Germany)

28 Ivi, p. 59. 29 Naturally, when discussing these developments it is well always to keep in mind that the Medieval period was characterized by the ubiquitous presence of an “order of things”, within which the players were the bodies rather than the individuals; therefore in examining the question of consensus to a pact or an oath it is important always to remember that the subjects, even when considered as single individuals, were conceived as living within a collectivity or within communities structured in an organic constitutional framework and not individualistically.

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Let us consider the communalistic experience in Italy and Germany, which Elazar defines as

the experience of “city-republics”30 in the period extending from the XIth to the XIVth

century. According to Elazar, these political communities were constructed on the basis of

networks of civic associations (corporations, guilds, confraternities, defensive leagues) that

were set up in the form of pacts through an oath (conjuratio) containing a very obvious

covenantal aspect (rather explicitly evoking moral and religious sentiment). The oath was

based on “reliance upon mutual trust” 31), despite the fact that its aims were thoroughly

contractualistic in the civil sense, that is to say, they were not inspired by a shared social

vision but only by the members’ need to protect themselves and to cooperate in order to

achieve peace and prosperity. Elazar believed that this practice was underlain by a juridical

theory of popular government as self-government (with a specific theory of sovereignty and

of tyrannical degeneration) which had been fairly completely worked out in the XIVth century

by legal scholars such as Baldo degli Ubaldi and above all Bartolo da Sassoferrato32. It was

this scaffold that then gave shape to the stream of thought defined as “civic humanism” and

hence to the secular ideology of civic republicanism. 33. In this perspective, the advent of the

seigneuries represented the degeneration of the republican model in favour of the hierarchical-

organic princely principle.

Among the Germanic populations, several tribes became leading exponents of covenantal

practice, such as the Alemanni, who had settled in southern Germany between the Rhine and

the Danube, and were also the ancestors of the medieval German-speaking Swiss tribes. Their

manner of acting can be viewed as an expansion of the original character of covenantal

practice, for which the term “primitive forest democracy” has been used. It consisted in a

sworn relationship between the assembly of warriors – free men and elective chieftains – in

types of society founded on pact relations, and others – such as the Franks – among whom the

oath gave way to hiearchical relations that gradually became organic, hereditary and stable. 30 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 60. 31 Ivi, p. 61. 32 On this cf. D. Quaglioni, Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano. Il “De tiranno” di Bartolo da Sassoferrato (1314-1357), Florence, Olschki, 1983. 33 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., pp. 62-64. Elazar’s observations bascially rest on the studies by Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Age, dating from 1809, and by E. Freeman, History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, London, Macmillan, 1893, and also, as regards the relation between history and heritage and its bearing on the modern character of Italian democracy, on R. Putnam, R. Leonardi, R. Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, Princeton University Press,

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Elazar points out, however, that even in the context of the Holy Roman Empire references to

the original “conventionality” of kingship still survived, as can be found explicitly in the XIth

century doctrine expounded by the monk Manegold of Lautenbach from Alsace, in the Liber

ad Gebehardum (possibly Gebeardo of Constance, son of the duke of Carinthia and a monk at

Hirsay), but also in the Liber contra Wolfemum, although this doctrine is reductively known

mainly as an element supporting his hieratic pro-papacy and anti-imperial stance in the

struggle for the investitures34.

Manegold – as Ovidio Capitani also points out – focuses on three issues. Firstly, he address

the semantic aspect, according to which the king is not “nomen naturae” but only an

“officium” that is appropriately matched to the tasks of its holder, whose appointment can be

rescinded if he is unsuited or unworthy of the position. The second issue concerns the pact,

which has the characteristic of highlighting the voluntary establishment of kingship,

proceeding from the people themselves, and the right to rebel against a tyrant. Thirdly, he

considers the hierocratic aspect, which asserts the right of the pope to intervene by

excommunicating unworthy kings. Naturally, Elazar was primarily interested in the second

covenantal feature, which he showed to be more widespread in Germanic culture. It was

founded not on the practice of the oath of brotherhood (Geschwurbruderheit), an oath that

was effective above all in kinship relations, but on an oath sworn among companions in arms

(Gergasinds).

Finally, as far as the phenomenon of German cities is concerned, in comparing and

contrasting them with the Italic Communes Elazar mentions a point which in his view has

received insufficient attention, namely that the German cities featured a greater presence of

substantial Jewish communities that were internally linked by covenantal relations and which

fulfilled a significant function as a stimulus and a model. This is an observation Elazar

derived from his reading of studies by Irving Argus on urban civilization in the era preceding

1993. On the various acceptations and phases of republicanism, cf. also M.Geuna, La tradizione repubblicana e i suoi interpreti: famiglie teoriche e discontinuità concettuali, “Filosofia politica”, XII, 1998, 1, pp. 101-132. 34 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 75. On the political thought of Manegoldo cf. A. J. Carlyle, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory, Edinburgh-London, W. Blackwood, 1950, vol. III, pp. 160-169; R. Laakmann, Manegold of Lautenbach, Hamburg, Hamburg University Press, 1969; O. Capitani, Papato e impero nei secoli XI e XII, in Storia delle idee politiche, economiche e sociali, Ebraismo e cristianesimo, cit., vol. II, Tome II, p. 148; M. Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri, Il pensiero politico medievale, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2000, pp. 25-27.

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the crusades35. Elazar’s general conclusion is that in a historical perspective, it was in effect

the pact-based experience of the majority of the early Germanic populations – the populations

that would later gave rise to the German nation – that prompted the first stirrings of

federalism: although blended in various different ways and having organizations with varying

degrees of hierarchical-organic structure, it was their heritage that would underlie the

tendency to solve the problem of national integration in a federative manner several centuries

later.

Last but not least, Elazar suggests that even in the conciliar Council movement that was the

hallmark of much of the XVth century a covenantal tension can be perceived precisely in the

opposition to the hierarchical-organic model of the Catholic Church.

5.2. The Swiss experience

The well known story of William Tell and the ensuing Grütli pact of August 1291 hardly

needs to be told. This was the agreement through which the three cantons (Orte, Kanton is

actually a later term) of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden joined together in the Conjuratio

Helvetica, which formally created the first historical confederation (although it should not be

overlooked that the memory of confederative pacts had been handed down across the

generations among the inhabitants of the valleys). In the course of time the Conjuratio was

expanded by the entry of new members (up to the present-day 26) and was transformed in

1848, after the Sonderbund war, into the modern federation as we know it today. In this

conjuratio one finds the oath and the covenant appearing together, in that it was a pact not

only of military union directed against the Austrian Habsburg administration, but also a legal

and political pact (as emerges from David Lasserre’s studies on the “fatal hours” of

federalism36). In fact the most innovative part of the pact was represented by the clauses

which stated that the Swiss demanded judges elected among the inhabitants of the cantons,

capable of judging according to the rules in force in the cantons themselves. This is recorded

35 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., pp. 81-90. Cf. I. Argus, Urban Civilization in Pre-Crusader Europe: A Study of Organized Town-life in Northwestern Europe During the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, New York, Yeshiva University Press, 1965. 36 Cf. D. Lasserre, Die Schicksalstunden des Föderalismus. Alliances confédérales 1291-1815, Zurich, Erlenbach, 1941. On Swiss federalism cf. D. de Rougemont, La Suisse, où l’histoire d’un peuple heureux, Paris, Hachette, 1965; R. E. Papa, Storia della Svizzera. Dall'antichità a oggi. Il mito del federalismo, Milan, Bompiani,1993.

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in a significant statement issued by the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden: after

promising one another mutual help, they declare that “considering the adversities of time, and

in order to be in a better position to defend and to preserve in a good state not only themselves

but also their property and their rights, they have promised in good faith to assist one another

with help, advice and favours, both with regard to people and also to things, within and

beyond the confines of the valleys, with all the means available to them, against everyone and

anyone who commits acts of violence to them or to any one of them or causes damage or

harm by contriving some injury against persons or things”. By virtue of such a pact and oath,

each community undertakes to intervene in order to come to another’s aid or to be aided, and

in case of internal disputes each community agrees to accept the judgment of the common

arbiter, who must be a judge dwelling within the confederation. Thus the representatives of

the three cantons solemnly swear “not to receive any judge who has purchased his post for

any price or monies, and who is not an inhabitant of our valleys”.

According to Elazar, the genuinely covenantal bases of the Grütli – which rested on the joint

Celtic-Alemannic ethnic element that was culturally predisposed towards cultures involving

oaths and the covenant37 – reside in the fact that from its very beginning it was not regarded

as a sort of international treaty, i.e. as a form of agreement among components who believed

themselves to be completely distinct from one another in terms of a protonational framework.

Instead, it was seen as a pact among components of the same “nation”, these components

being already internally linked on the basis of pacts. The later pacts through which new local

units joined the primitive nucleus were likewise considered to be of the same kind as the first.

The 1370 Charter of Priest was the first attempt to establish a constitutional charter designed

to organise the legislation of all the cantonal communities in a confederal framework. For the

first time the term “unzer eydgenossenschaft”, our confederation, appeared in this charter, as

an independent means of identifying the new constitutional subject. The charter also provided

for a federal service of traffic protection along the major routes connecting the cantons. It was

followed by other similar documents such as the 1393 Sempach Pact and the 1481 Stans Pact,

which established common rules for the conduct of war, the safeguarding of order within the

confederation, and a common foreign policy. The text of the Ode to God of the Canton of

Appenzell, which states that republican liberties are attributed to the virtues of the people’s

covenant with God, is, in Elazar’s eyes, a demonstration that Swiss covenantalism is founded

37 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 100.

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on the convergence between federal political culture and a strong religious tradition (a

combination that Tocqueville would note and highlight centuries later with regard to the union

of spirit of freedom and religion as an intrinsic part of the United States federal

experience38).

5.3. The experience of the English-speaking world

Strong traces of cultures based on oaths and pacts can also be found in other Northern

Germanic populations, starting from the Friesian regions and extending as far as Scandinavia.

However, Elazar is of the opinion that a presence comparable to the Swiss experience can be

traced above all in the British Isles, where once again the Celtic strain blended with the

Anglo-Saxon influx in the South and with the Scottish element in the North, all these being

closely involved in what can be described as coherent forms of covenantal behaviour. In

England they found themselves facing a partly unequal struggle against the strong centralising

Norman culture with its organic-hierarchical traits. But overall, during the Middle Ages the

original political cultures prevailed in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Elazar also devotes considerable space to the attempt to demonstrate that even the word

freedom derives from the Saxon “freo”, a genuinely covenantal term signifying the condition

of being unbound, in the sense of liberated, but at the same time also available to establish a

bond with another group through an oath.

Elazar claims to find substantial evidence of a covenantal mode of political thought imbued

with original references to the Jewish experience in the work of the Venerable Bede, a biblical

exegetist, liturgist and historian of Anglo-Saxon roots who lived between the seventh and

eighth century39. For both in the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum and in Beowulf,

kingship is argued to hark back to the pact-based model of the Kings of Israel, even though it

is linked to the culture of oaths of loyalty which arose in the feudal period. According to

Elazar, Bede “was particularly aware of the pact-based dimension [of the political sphere] and

wrote extensively on this subject in biblical exegesis, specifically referring to the term brit”

40. Bede, Elazar suggests, recognised the biblical story of creation and the fall into original

38 Ivi, p. 101. 39 On Bede cf. P. Delogu, Germani e Carolingi, in Storia delle idee politiche economiche e sociali, vol. II, Ebraismo e cristianesimo. Il Medioevo, cit., pp. 14 e 26. 40 Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 128. Cf. note 12, p. 143, where Elazar, reproposing his polemic – described at the beginning of this contribution – concerning the distorted translation of the Jewish term berith

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sin as a covenantal document, followed by the Nohaic pact, which he viewed as a cosmic

foreshadowing of the new Christian covenant.

After Scotland, England became the elective land of pact-based political approaches. It was in

England that the Magna Charta was signed in 1215, a charter which in Elazar’s view should

be seen as the pact that marked the end of the rise of organic-hierarchical power typified by

Norman feudalism, and the turning-point towards more covenantal forms of political action.

5.4. The Scottish experience

Whereas England would henceforth always be characterised by a web of forces locked in a

dialectic between covenantal versus feudal hierarchical-organic tendencies, Scotland was, in

Elazar’s interpretation, deeply permeated with covenantal forms of attitudes. Once again,

Elazar points to ethnic-cultural roots as a means of accounting for this phenomenon (Celts,

Picts, Britanni and Scots were all populations with a long-standing tradition of oaths and

pacts). But Elazar also points out that the particular form of Christianisation of the region,

brought about by monks arriving from Ireland and living in religious groupings organised on

a covenantal basis, made a substantial contribution in this direction.41

In effect, in the historical perspective, Scottish social and monarchic institutions always

followed a pact-based and elective model reminiscent of the biblical pattern (even after

consolidation of the Stuart dynasty), in which the theory of popular sovereignty under the

recognition of divine authority as recognised in the original pact between God and man

remained constantly present, together with all its implications. The issue of reformed

Protestantism and the tragic end of Mary Queen of Scots in the XVIth century are a reminder

of this background, which also provided the basis for the notion of Scottish covenantal self-

government which began to circulate in Seventeenth-century revolutionary England; this

notion would be taken up again by John Milton in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,

where he wrote: “The Scots, in justification of their deposing Queen Mary, sent ambassadors

to Queen Elizabeth and in a written declaration alleged, that they had used towards her more

lenity than she deserved; that their ancestors had therefore punished their kings by death or

banishment; they, the Scots were a free nation, made kings whom they freely chose, and with

by diatheke and testamentum in Greek and Latin, cites as evidence in favour of his interpretation a sentence by Bede which states that where in the Greek and Latin translation “legimus testamentum, ibi in Hebraeo sermone sit foedus, sive pactum, idest berith”. 41 Ivi, p. 133.

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the same freedom unkinged him if they saw cause, by right of ancient laws and ceremonies

yet remaining, and old customs yet among the Highlanders in choosing the head of their clans

or families; all which, with many other arguments, bore witness that regal power was nothing

else but a mutual covenant or stipulation between king and people”.42

The Scottish covenantal tradition is in fact well known, even though it tends to be diluted in

the historiographic account of the struggle to maintain Scottish independence from Norman

England (the fine story of William Wallace and Robert Bruce in Mel Gibson’s film

Braveheart). Indeed this is precisely the period – late XIIIth and early XIVth century, after

Robert Bruce’s defeat of the English army of Edward IInd, which put an end to the aim of

conquering Scotland – that also saw the Declaration of Arbroath drawn up in 1320 by the

Scottish clans and sent to the pope in order to establish their freedom with a solemn

constitution. Elazar believes that the Declaration also defined proposals inspired by the

covenantal approach which were designed to limit royal power (with a wealth of biblical

references to Maccabees and Joshua) and bind it to popular consent.43 It states: “A quibus

Malis innumeris, ipso Juvante qui post vulnera medetur et sanat, liberati sumus per

strenuissimum Principem, Regem et Dominum nostrum, Dominum Robertum, qui pro populo

et hereditate suis de manibus Inimicorum liberandis quasi alter Machabeus aut Josue labores

et tedia, inedias et pericula, leto sustinuit animo. Quem eciam divina disposicio et iuxta leges

et Consuetudines nostra, quas usque ad mortem sustinere volumus, Juris successio et debitus

nostrorum omnium Consensus et Assensus nostrum fecerunt Principem atque Regem, cui

tanquam illi per quem salus in populo nostro facta est pro nostra libertate tuenda tam Jure

quam meritis tenemur et volumus in omnibus adherere. Quem si ab inceptis desisteret, regi

Anglorum aut Anglicis nos aut Regnum nostrum volens subicere, tanquam inimicum nostrum

et sui nostrique Juris subversorem statim expellere niteremur et alium Regem nostrum qui ad

defensionem nostram sufficeret faceremus. Quia quamdiu Centum ex nobis vivi remanserint,

nuncquam Anglorum dominio aliquatenus volumus subiugari. Non enim propter gloriam,

divicias aut honores pugnamus sed propter libertatem solummodo quam Nemo bonus nisi

simul cum vita amittit.”

42 The quotation from Milton (taken from Political Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991) is in Elazar, Covenant and Commonwealth, cit., p. 135 (my italics). 43 Elazar quotes the text in English, ivi, p. 136. Cf. the Latin text of the Declaration in The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. by T. Thomson and C. Innes, Edinburgh 1814-1875, vol. I, pp. 474-475.

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When the Scottish magnates proudly asserted that through their “consensus et assensus

fecerunt principem atque regem”, they set the agenda for a political practice that heralded

covenantal practice, which would subsequently blossom and flourish above all during the

early modern age, in the history of relations between “people and judge” that were an

important theme in movements inspired by political Calvinism, in Geneva, Germany, the Low

Countries and in Britannia itself, as well as in New England. It is these experiences that laid

the foundations of modern liberty.

Conclusion

In conclusion, according to Elazar the medieval period offers an opportunity to apprehend the

persistent and efficacious presence of the covenantal tradition in three dimensions: 1) the

covenant as an operative concept in every political order, exerting its action and influence to

varying degrees and in various different ways, not only in societies having a federative

orientation but also in those that were apparently far-removed from such a principle and

expressed regimes of a hierarchical-organic type; 2) the covenant as an expression of affinity

between oath-based and pact-based societies and cultures; 3) the surprising capacity of the

covenantal tradition to survive even in extremely hostile environments such as the feudal

Middle Ages.

Elzarar is therefore strongly convinced that covenantalism is not only in some sense organic

to the characteristic of a “natural” predisposition to this mode of thought - a characteristic that

is displayed by certain peoples - but it is also an insuppressible part of human experience that

leads towards the unstoppable rise of federal organizations. It is no coincidence that despite

lying dormant for centuries during the lifespan of the Holy Roman Empire, covenantalism

was to emerge forcefully in the period of the reformation and, finally, in modern federalism

and republicanism.

Working Papers The full text of the working papers is downloadable at http://polis.unipmn.it/

*Economics Series **Political Theory Series ε Al.Ex Series

2007 n.98** Corrado Malandrino: Pre-modern covenant and covenantalism in Daniel Judah Elazar's federalist elaboration

2007 n.97ε Stefania Ottone, Ferruccio Ponzano and Roberto Ricciuti: Simulating voting rule reforms for the Italian parliament. An economic perspective

2007 n.96* Albert Breton, Anthony Scott and Angela Fraschini: Explaining differences in environmental governance patterns between Canada, Italy and the United States

2007 n.95* Roberto Ricciuti: The quest for a fiscal rule: Italy, 1861-1998

2007 n.94ε Davide Biassoni: L'influenza dei sistemi elettorali nella stabilita' dei governi

2007 n.93** Joerg Luther and Domenico Francavilla: Nepal's constitutional transition

2007 n.91ε Marie-Edith Bissey and Guido Ortona: The program for the simulation of electoral systems ALEX4.1: what it does and how to use it

2007 n.90* Roberto Ricciuti: Un'analisi economica della partecipazione ai referendum abrogativi

2007 n.89* Michela Bia and Alessandra Mattei: Application of the Generalized Propensity Score. Evaluation of public contributions to Piedmont entreprises

2007 n.88* Michela Bia: The Propensity Score method in public policy evaluation: a survey

2007 n.87* Luca Mo Costabella and Alberto Martini: Valutare gli effetti indesiderati dell’istituto della mobilità sul comportamento delle imprese e dei lavoratori.

2007 n.86ε Stefania Ottone: Are people samaritans or avengers?

2007 n.85* Roberto Zanola: The dynamics of art prices: the selection corrected repeat-sales index

2006 n.84* Antonio Nicita and Giovanni B. Ramello: Property, liability and market power: the antitrust side of copyright

2006 n.83* Gianna Lotito: Dynamic inconsistency and different models of dynamic choice – a review

2006 n.82** Gabriella Silvestrini: Le républicanisme genevois au XVIIIe siècle

2006 n.81* Giorgio Brosio and Roberto Zanola: Can violence be rational? An empirical analysis of Colombia

2006 n.80* Franco Cugno and Elisabetta Ottoz: Static inefficiency of compulsory licensing: Quantity vs. price competition

2006 n.79* Carla Marchese: Rewarding the consumer for curbing the evasion of commodity taxes?

2006 n.78** Joerg Luther: Percezioni europee della storia costituzionale cinese

2006 n.77ε Guido Ortona, Stefania Ottone, Ferruccio Ponzano and Francesco Scacciati: Labour supply in presence of taxation financing public services. An experimental approach.

2006 n.76* Giovanni B. Ramello and Francesco Silva: Appropriating signs and meaning: the elusive economics of trademark

2006 n.75* Nadia Fiorino and Roberto Ricciuti: Legislature size and government spending in Italian regions: forecasting the effects of a reform

2006 n.74** Joerg Luther and Corrado Malandrino: Letture provinciali della costituzione europea

2006 n.73* Giovanni B. Ramello: What's in a sign? Trademark law and economic theory

2006 n.72* Nadia Fiorino and Roberto Ricciuti: Determinants of direct democracy across Europe

2006 n.71* Angela Fraschini and Franco Oscultati: La teoria economica dell'associazionismo tra enti locali

2006 n.70* Mandana Hajj and Ugo Panizza: Religion and gender gap, are Muslims different?

2006 n.69* Ana Maria Loboguerrero and Ugo Panizza: Inflation and labor market flexibility: the squeaky wheel gets the grease

2006 n.68* Alejandro Micco, Ugo Panizza and Monica Yañez: Bank ownership and performance: does politics matter?

2006 n.67* Alejandro Micco and Ugo Panizza: Bank ownership and lending behavior

2006 n.66* Angela Fraschini: Fiscal federalism in big developing countries: China and India

2006 n.65* Corrado Malandrino: La discussione tra Einaudi e Michels sull'economia pura e sul metodo della storia delle dottrine economiche

2006 n.64ε Stefania Ottone: Fairness: a survey

2006 n.63* Andrea Sisto: Propensity Score matching: un'applicazione per la creazione di un database integrato ISTAT-Banca d'Italia

2005 n.62* P. Pellegrino: La politica sanitaria in Italia: dalla riforma legislativa alla riforma costituzionale

2005 n.61* Viola Compagnoni: Analisi dei criteri per la definizione di standard sanitari nazionali

2005 n.60ε Guido Ortona, Stefania Ottone and Ferruccio Ponzano: A simulative assessment of the Italian electoral system

2005 n.59ε Guido Ortona and Francesco Scacciati: Offerta di lavoro in presenza di tassazione: l'approccio sperimentale

2005 n.58* Stefania Ottone and Ferruccio Ponzano, An extension of the model of Inequity Aversion by Fehr and Schmidt

2005 n.57ε Stefania Ottone, Transfers and altruistic punishment in Solomon's Game experiments

2005 n. 56ε Carla Marchese and Marcello Montefiori, Mean voting rule and strategical behavior: an experiment

2005 n.55** Francesco Ingravalle, La sussidiarietà nei trattati e nelle istituzioni politiche dell'UE.

2005 n. 54* Rosella Levaggi and Marcello Montefiori, It takes three to tango: soft budget constraint and cream skimming in the hospital care market

2005 n.53* Ferruccio Ponzano, Competition among different levels of government: the re-election problem.

2005 n.52* Andrea Sisto and Roberto Zanola, Rationally addicted to cinema and TV? An empirical investigation of Italian consumers .

2005 n.51* Luigi Bernardi and Angela Fraschini, Tax system and tax reforms in India

2005 n.50* Ferruccio Ponzano, Optimal provision of public goods under imperfect intergovernmental competition.

2005 n.49* Franco Amisano e Alberto Cassone, Proprieta’ intellettuale e mercati: il ruolo della tecnologia e conseguenze microeconomiche

2005 n.48* Tapan Mitra e Fabio Privileggi, Cantor Type Attractors in Stochastic Growth Models

2005 n.47ε Guido Ortona, Voting on the Electoral System: an Experiment

2004 n.46ε Stefania Ottone, Transfers and altruistic Punishments in Third Party Punishment Game Experiments.

2004 n.45* Daniele Bondonio, Do business incentives increase employment in declining areas? Mean impacts versus impacts by degrees of economic distress.

2004 n.44** Joerg Luther, La valorizzazione del Museo provinciale della battaglia di Marengo: un parere di diritto pubblico

2004 n.43* Ferruccio Ponzano, The allocation of the income tax among different levels of government: a theoretical solution

2004 n.42* Albert Breton e Angela Fraschini, Intergovernmental equalization grants: some fundamental principles

2004 n.41* Andrea Sisto, Roberto Zanola, Rational Addiction to Cinema? A Dynamic Panel Analisis of European Countries

2004 n.40** Francesco Ingravalle, Stato, groβe Politik ed Europa nel pensiero politico di F. W. Nietzsche

2003 n.39ε Marie Edith Bissey, Claudia Canegallo, Guido Ortona and Francesco Scacciati, Competition vs. cooperation. An experimental inquiry

2003 n.38ε Marie-Edith Bissey, Mauro Carini, Guido Ortona, ALEX3: a simulation program to compare electoral systems

2003 n.37* Cinzia Di Novi, Regolazione dei prezzi o razionamento: l’efficacia dei due sistemi di allocazione nella fornitura di risorse scarse a coloro che ne hanno maggiore necessita’

2003 n. 36* Marilena Localtelli, Roberto Zanola, The Market for Picasso Prints: An Hybrid Model Approach

2003 n. 35* Marcello Montefiori, Hotelling competition on quality in the health care market.

2003 n. 34* Michela Gobbi, A Viable Alternative: the Scandinavian Model of “Social Democracy”

2002 n. 33* Mario Ferrero, Radicalization as a reaction to failure: an economic model of islamic extremism

2002 n. 32ε Guido Ortona, Choosing the electoral system – why not simply the best one?

2002 n. 31** Silvano Belligni, Francesco Ingravalle, Guido Ortona, Pasquale Pasquino, Michel Senellart, Trasformazioni della politica. Contributi al seminario di Teoria politica

2002 n. 30* Franco Amisano, La corruzione amministrativa in una burocrazia di tipo concorrenziale: modelli di analisi economica.

2002 n. 29* Marcello Montefiori, Libertà di scelta e contratti prospettici: l’asimmetria informativa nel mercato delle cure sanitarie ospedaliere

2002 n. 28* Daniele Bondonio, Evaluating the Employment Impact of Business Incentive

Programs in EU Disadvantaged Areas. A case from Northern Italy

2002 n. 27** Corrado Malandrino, Oltre il compromesso del Lussemburgo verso l’Europa federale. Walter Hallstein e la crisi della “sedia vuota”(1965-66)

2002 n. 26** Guido Franzinetti, Le Elezioni Galiziane al Reichsrat di Vienna, 1907-1911

2002 n. 25ε Marie-Edith Bissey and Guido Ortona, A simulative frame to study the integration of defectors in a cooperative setting

2001 n. 24* Ferruccio Ponzano, Efficiency wages and endogenous supervision technology

2001 n. 23* Alberto Cassone and Carla Marchese, Should the death tax die? And should it leave an inheritance?

2001 n. 22* Carla Marchese and Fabio Privileggi, Who participates in tax amnesties? Self-selection of risk-averse taxpayers

2001 n. 21* Claudia Canegallo, Una valutazione delle carriere dei giovani lavoratori atipici: la fedeltà aziendale premia?

2001 n. 20* Stefania Ottone, L'altruismo: atteggiamento irrazionale, strategia vincente o

amore per il prossimo?

2001 n. 19* Stefania Ravazzi, La lettura contemporanea del cosiddetto dibattito fra Hobbes e Hume

2001 n. 18* Alberto Cassone e Carla Marchese, Einaudi e i servizi pubblici, ovvero come contrastare i monopolisti predoni e la burocrazia corrotta

2001 n. 17* Daniele Bondonio, Evaluating Decentralized Policies: How to Compare the Performance of Economic Development Programs across Different Regions or States.

2000 n. 16* Guido Ortona, On the Xenophobia of non-discriminated Ethnic Minorities

2000 n. 15* Marilena Locatelli-Biey and Roberto Zanola, The Market for Sculptures: An Adjacent Year Regression Index

2000 n. 14* Daniele Bondonio, Metodi per la valutazione degli aiuti alle imprse con specifico target territoriale

2000 n. 13* Roberto Zanola, Public goods versus publicly provided private goods in a two-class economy

2000 n. 12** Gabriella Silvestrini, Il concetto di «governo della legge» nella tradizione repubblicana.

2000 n. 11** Silvano Belligni, Magistrati e politici nella crisi italiana. Democrazia dei

guardiani e neopopulismo

2000 n. 10* Rosella Levaggi and Roberto Zanola, The Flypaper Effect: Evidence from the

Italian National Health System

1999 n. 9* Mario Ferrero, A model of the political enterprise

1999 n. 8* Claudia Canegallo, Funzionamento del mercato del lavoro in presenza di informazione asimmetrica

1999 n. 7** Silvano Belligni, Corruzione, malcostume amministrativo e strategie etiche. Il ruolo dei codici.

1999 n. 6* Carla Marchese and Fabio Privileggi, Taxpayers Attitudes Towaer Risk and

Amnesty Partecipation: Economic Analysis and Evidence for the Italian Case.

1999 n. 5* Luigi Montrucchio and Fabio Privileggi, On Fragility of Bubbles in Equilibrium Asset Pricing Models of Lucas-Type

1999 n. 4** Guido Ortona, A weighted-voting electoral system that performs quite well.

1999 n. 3* Mario Poma, Benefici economici e ambientali dei diritti di inquinamento: il caso della riduzione dell’acido cromico dai reflui industriali.

1999 n. 2* Guido Ortona, Una politica di emergenza contro la disoccupazione semplice, efficace equasi efficiente.

1998 n. 1* Fabio Privileggi, Carla Marchese and Alberto Cassone, Risk Attitudes and the Shift of Liability from the Principal to the Agent

Department of Public Policy and Public Choice “Polis” The Department develops and encourages research in fields such as:

• theory of individual and collective choice; • economic approaches to political systems; • theory of public policy; • public policy analysis (with reference to environment, health care, work, family, culture,

etc.); • experiments in economics and the social sciences; • quantitative methods applied to economics and the social sciences; • game theory; • studies on social attitudes and preferences; • political philosophy and political theory; • history of political thought.

The Department has regular members and off-site collaborators from other private or public organizations.

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Please ensure that the final version of your manuscript conforms to the requirements listed below:

The manuscript should be typewritten single-faced and double-spaced with wide margins.

Include an abstract of no more than 100 words. Classify your article according to the Journal of Economic Literature classification system. Keep footnotes to a minimum and number them consecutively throughout the manuscript with superscript Arabic numerals. Acknowledgements and information on grants received can be given in a first footnote (indicated by an asterisk, not included in the consecutive numbering). Ensure that references to publications appearing in the text are given as follows: COASE (1992a; 1992b, ch. 4) has also criticized this bias.... and “...the market has an even more shadowy role than the firm” (COASE 1988, 7). List the complete references alphabetically as follows: Periodicals: KLEIN, B. (1980), “Transaction Cost Determinants of ‘Unfair’ Contractual Arrangements,” American Economic Review, 70(2), 356-362. KLEIN, B., R. G. CRAWFORD and A. A. ALCHIAN (1978), “Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process,” Journal of Law and Economics, 21(2), 297-326. Monographs: NELSON, R. R. and S. G. WINTER (1982), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, 2nd ed., Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA. Contributions to collective works: STIGLITZ, J. E. (1989), “Imperfect Information in the Product Market,” pp. 769-847, in R. SCHMALENSEE and R. D. WILLIG (eds.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, Vol. I, North Holland: Amsterdam-London-New York-Tokyo. Working papers: WILLIAMSON, O. E. (1993), “Redistribution and Efficiency: The Remediableness Standard,”

Working paper, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley.