| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Scott Gordon. Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1999. Pp. x, 395. $59.95.

Much recent writing on constitutionalism tends toward hermeneutical abstraction or ideological posturing. Scott Gordon's book stands in refreshing contrast: a lucid, incisive, tightly constructed work that analyzes political ideas and institutions in their historical context and in the intellectual tradition of Western constitutional thought. 1

Unlike scholars who emphasize the complexity of constitutionalism, taking into account the wide range of conflicting identities, interests, goods, and values in modern political society, Gordon adopts a simple and straightforward approach to his subject. "The plain fact," he writes, "is that all government is, unavoidably, the exercise of coercive power" (p. 6). The "central issue of constitutionalism" therefore is "the problem of controlling the power to coerce" (p. 7). Among various means of constraining power that have been tried throughout history, including appeals to virtue, morality, legality, and natural law, Gordon says the only effective way "lies in recognizing the fact that power can only be controlled by power" (p. 15). . . .

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