The fragile power of political nations: Adam Smith’s federative

Poole, Thomas ORCID: 0000-0001-9721-7502 and Clark, Martin (2025) The fragile power of political nations: Adam Smith’s federative. Modern Intellectual History. ISSN 1479-2443 (In Press)

Text (Adam Smith's Federative 24Feb25 FINAL) - Accepted Version Pending embargo until 1 January 2100. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (523kB)

Abstract

This article examines Adam Smith’s concept of the federative: the double-facing constitutional power to conduct international relations today called the treaty or foreign affairs power. We reconstruct Smith’s account of the federative from his major and minor works and demonstrate its importance in his account of law and empire. We first examine Smith’s early “internal federative”, where the power grows from the internal constitutional organisation of the state. What starts as a democratic right to wage war and make peace becomes concentrated over time in the sovereign and its advisors as a “senatoriall” power. We then turn to the “external federative” in Smith’s later works where the federative is redesigned as a power to unify colonial legislative bodies, connecting the familial sentiments of Britain and America, and forming a model for moving, slowly, towards the conditions Smith deemed necessary for international justice.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Law
Subjects:	K Law J Political Science B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Date Deposited:	26 Feb 2025 12:27
Last Modified:	26 Feb 2025 12:33
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127422

Actions (login required)

View Item