What is Absolutism?

What is absolutism?

Absolutism is any political regime in which rulers are unrestrained by custom of rule of law, and where the exercise of power can be arbitrary.

Absolutism is the doctrine start justifying such a regime.

Absolutism is the specific states form and related Doctrines (E.G divine right of kings) associated with centralising European monarch used in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Absolutism is the form of Western European state which precedes the capitalist state.

The reality, no ruler possesses absolute power. the The conventional view has been an absolute government was a feature premodern, nonwestern states, E.G.the Turkish sultanate or Fijian monarchy. However, the arbitrary power in social mobilisation of subject populations (E.G. In the building of the pyramids) were a feature of such regimes, the lack of modern technologies of communication and surveillance meant that effective power was often severely limited.

Historically, Western sociologists and political Scientists tended to exaggerate differences between non-European and European constitutional regimes – an aspect of the general ethnocentricism of Western social science, especially in the 19th century.

Western European absolutism was absolutist only in comparison with the Federal marquees that preceded it And the constitutional marquees which followed. the Marxist view in the Western European absolutism rose from a balance of power between traditional landowning aristocracy and the rising of bourgeoisie. This enabled monarchs to establish more effective central control, including efficient systems of taxation. In practice, restraints and the centralisation of political power remained, associated with the continued existence of independently powerful groups and introduction of new constitutional rights.

Debates exist in sociology as to how far absolutism in Europe was an integral element in the rise of Western capitalism, and whether it should be viewed as involving the recasting of feudal aristocratic Power or is the onset of modern bourgeois domination.