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Can the Prince Really Be Tamed? Executive Prerogative, Popular Apathy, and the Constitutional Frame in Locke's Second Treatise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2007

BENJAMIN A. KLEINERMAN
BENJAMIN A. KLEINERMAN
Affiliation:
Harvard University and Virginia Military Institute
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Abstract

Even as he recommends it as the extra-constitutional solution to the inefficiencies and insufficiencies of legislative constitutionalism, Locke's Second Treatise is far more aware of the dangers of executive prerogative than the more optimistic accounts in the recent scholarship have appreciated, making Locke pessimistic about the permanent sustenance of legislative constitutionalism. This pessimism stems from Locke's recognition that the people are far too constitutionally passive for the vigilance essential to ‘umpire’ well the necessity of executive action outside the laws. In fact, liberalism itself can contribute to such passivity: the people are content to allow an executive to act with a significant degree of discretion outside the laws so long as those actions do not interfere with their short-term interest in security and prosperity. Understanding Locke's pessimism regarding popular vigilance casts into new light his argument for a legislative constitutionalism based on fundamental laws that establish a clear separation of powers. Such fundamental laws provide legislative elites with the constitutional ‘signals’ by which they can alert the otherwise slumbering people about an executive intent on usurpation and tyranny.

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ARTICLES
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 101 , Issue 2 , May 2007 , pp. 209 - 222
Copyright
© 2007 by the American Political Science Association

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