Montesquieu’s Theory On Form Of Government

This paper mainly base on Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws as the research object, to explore Montesquieu’view of regime. He divide the legal regime into three types: republican regime, monarchy and despotism.As a matter of fact, Montesquieu in his book The Spirit of the Laws, often called republic and monarchy as liberality regime,opposite with authoritarian regime,and use the authoritarian regime to highlight liberality regime as free,Montesquieu absolutely repudiated the authoritarian regime.And he thought democracy is only belong to the ancient Greek, Roman, did not belong to the present and future, this paper will not discuss too much of the republic. I mainly want to explore the regime form which in Montesquieu’s eyes is realistic-- the monarchy, and this is also the main purpose of this paper. Montesquieu consider the monarchy as a kind of liberality regime, but the current European monarchy represented by France still has a lot of authoritarian spirit, so it is urgent to reform the European monarchy to avoid it slide into despotism. So he claim from France ancient spirit of constitutionalism, and on the basis of the spirit of constitutionalism to make the original monarchy separation of powers, and finally realize the constitutional monarchy,that will be the best regime form.This paper’s content arrangement is generally as follows:Introduction.To introduce the research objects and research meaning of this paper, the domestic and foreign scholars on the research status of Montesquieu’s political view.Also overview the main framework of this paper and what is the author specific research content;The first chapter, the theory of presupposition: the nature of two regimes are opposite.In this chapter, I will compare the two type of regime’s distinctions of the nature and structure from the political nature, law-making, jurisdiction, noble and religious aspects in The Spirit of the Laws. It can be find that Montesquieu thought this two type of regime obviously opposed, So as to ascertain Montesquieu’s ideal polity pattern;The second chapter, the current situation of the French: monarchy have the possibility to fall into authoritarian regime. In this chapter I will outline how did Montesquieu describe the nature of the French government, law, the court, noble, religion in Persian Letters, and explore French status in the eyes of Montesquieu.Thus we can see that is completely different from the one he depicted in The Spirit of the Laws. Finally we can draw a conclusion: what Montesquieu described in The Spirit of the Laws of the monarchy is in fact his ideal constitutional monarchy form of government, but not the reality of the French national conditions.And I find that although Montesquieu think two type of regimes obviously opposed, but still get the possible of monarchy transfer to the authoritarian regime, so must based on the original monarchy to realize the constitutional;The third chapter, the demands of practice: to build a constitutional monarchy. Montesquieu carefully build the best way to safeguard citizens’ political freedom in The Spirit of the Laws: the separation of powers doctrine and theory of law. In this chapter I will mainly discuss Montesquieu’s main concept of law, judicature, noble and religion, and how did he make constitutional reform from the several aspects of France "absolute monarchy";Summary.In this section I will summarizes my main points and conclusions in this paper.