Johannes Althusius

Johannes Althusius (born 1557, Diedenshausen, Wittgenstein-Berleberg [now Bad Berleburg, Germany]—died August 12, 1638, Emden, East Friesland [Germany]) was a German political theorist who was the intellectual father of modern federalism and an advocate of popular sovereignty.

After philosophic and legal studies in Switzerland, Althusius was a professor at the University of Herborn in Nassau until 1604, when he became syndic of the town of Emden in the German province of East Friesland (Ostfriesland). He wrote a noted general treatise on Roman law, as well as other legal essays, but his principal work was Politica methodice digesta atque exemplis sacris et profanis illustrata (1603, enlarged 1610 and 1614; Politics Methodically Set Forth, and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples), a systematized tract on all forms of human association.

Althusius elaborated five principal types of association, each a combination of the preceding: the family, the voluntary corporation, the local community, the province, and lastly the state. A series of social contracts sustains the system as new groups are brought into existence. Each of his groups has an independent existence. Through his discussion of the complex relations between levels and the different types of associational arrangements, he developed a comprehensive theory of federalism as the means of achieving national unity, in which sovereignty, resting in the people through their groups, cannot be transferred because it is essential to the being of the political community.

While reflecting Calvinist Puritanism, Althusius stressed that each social group is to be justified by providing a full and happy life to its members. For several centuries, interest in Althusius was slight, until he was rediscovered early in the 20th century by the German political theorist Otto Friedrich von Gierke.