350 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
reorganized. Reflective thinking is called upon to shape new constitutions. Revised charters of Athens follow each other in quick succession, and so often did Florence mend her constitu- tion that Dante likened her to a sick man in bed always chang- ing his position to escape from pain.
There are differences in detail between the emergence of reflective thinking in Greece and Italy and its emergence in a centralized absolutism. In Italy the close of the wars between the pope and the emperor had left the local governments disor- ganized. Pressure from above was removed. Petty tyrants with illegitimate rule seized power through their shrewdness. Rapid revolutions brought all varieties of despotism, aristocracy, and democracy. Everything was on a small scale and easily over- turned.' In England and France, however, despotic government was centralized. In France this continued until the Revolution. In England it underwent a slow evolution, as a result of reflect- ive thinking. Here we can test more clearly than elsewhere the theories of sovereignty.
CHAPTER VIl.
SOVEREIGNTY COERCION'.
Austin's theory of sovereignty is based on the conception of a single will issuing commands to subordinates. "If a determi- nate human superior 7Wt in a habit of obedience to a like superior receive habittial obedience from the bulk of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in that society. The position of its other members toward that determinate superior is a state of subjection, or a state of dependence."'
This description, baldly dividing society, as it apparently does, into those who govern by sheer force and those who are forcibly subdued, has been met by attacks on all sides. With the help of these conflicting opinions we are able to analyze the elements which constitute sovereignty and to find that they are comprised in the following three concepts : coercion, order, right.
'BURKHARDT, The Renaissance in Italy, pp. 57, IJgff. ^ Jurisprtiiience^ p. 226.
