Autonomous non-kin groups and a strong aristocracy blocked absolutism in the West

Evidence

Social pluralism. Historically Western society has been highly pluralistic. As Deutsch notes, what is distinctive about the West “is the rise and persistence of diverse autonomous groups not based on blood relationship or marriage.” Beginning in the sixth and seventh centuries, these groups initially included monasteries, monastic orders, and guilds, but then expanded to include in many areas of Europe a variety of other associations and societies. Associational pluralism was supplemented by class pluralism. Most Western European societies included a relatively strong and autonomous aristocracy, a substantial peasantry, and a small but significant class of merchants and traders. The strength of the feudal aristocracy was particularly significant in limiting the extent to which absolutism was able to take firm root in most European nations. This European pluralism contrasts sharply with the poverty of civil society, the weakness of the aristocracy, and the strength of the centralized bureaucratic empires which simultaneously existed in Russia, China, the Ottoman lands, and other non-Western societies. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 190

Categorization

• QUESTION: This strong claim that aristocracy strength limited absolutism ‘in most European nations’ glosses over Prussia/Russia which had both strong nobility and absolutism; worth probing where this generalization fails.