Constitutionalism in post-1814 Europe : monarchy, parliament and sovereignty

Abstract

Even though the collapse of the Napoleonic order in 1814 symbolised a victory over the Revolution and its principles, it was impossible to negate the revolutionary legacy in general and constitutionalism in particular. A key challenge at the time was to reconcile monarchs’ claims to sovereignty and power with post-revolutionary societies’ expectations of both a constitutional state and maintaining the political innovations generated by the Revolution and the Napoleonic Regime. This was a dilemma which gave rise to the concept of a genuinely monarchical form of constitutional rule in Europe, for which the Charte constitutionnelle of the restored Bourbon monarchy in France – establishing a representative constitutional system which at the same time retained many of the monarch’s traditional prerogatives – became a nineteenth-century role model. From the outset, however, “constitutional monarchism”, proved to be a fragile political compromise, with a distinct structural dualism between crown and parliament – and thus a latent systemic conflict. Moreover, constitutional monarchism was not the only conceivable alternative: the English common-law constitutional order, which had once inspired Montesquieu’s work, or the Spanish Cádiz Constitution of 1812 represented other potential points of reference for nineteenth-century constitutionalism, as did revolutionary constitutions like the American Constitution of 1787 and the first French Constitution of 1791 notwithstanding their being based on the principle of popular sovereignty. Against this background, this article aims to outline the genesis and characteristic features of post-Napoleonic “constitutional monarchism”, and examine its role for nineteenth-century constitutionalism against other potential models.