The Identity and Significance of Commons’s A Sociological view of Sovereignty

Around 1894 John R. Commons began two projects: one culminated in Proportional Representation (1896), a transparent book, the other in a nearly opaque series of articles titled A Sociological View of Sovereignty (1899b–1900) – in fact a compressed outline of a massive treatise he had intended to finish after 15 years of work (Commons 1897a). A Sociological View of Sovereignty (hereafter SVOS) raises questions. First, what is its identity? It spreads across topics in religion, ethics, psychology, sociology, political science, juristic law, history, and public policy. Is it simply a sociological theory of sovereignty ¹ emphasizing economic factors (Barnes 1924, 131), or a “general” theory of the growth and functioning of “the dominant institutions of modern society” applicable to all the social sciences (Dorfman 1965, iii, iv), or a conjectural history of the development of society (Harter 1962, 216)? Second, is it significant, foreshadowing the finished work that Commons called his “Institutional Economics” (1934b, 44) and also his social philosophy of trade unionism or “modern Liberalism”? ²