Supersovereign Power

That's a great piece.

The problem of succession has to be solved one way or another. If it's not solved by lot, then the successor will either be chosen by the sovereign or someone else. If someone else, then that someone else is a supersovereign and will be the point of attention for everyone competing for supersovereign power. And why wouldn't someone else be as likely to screw up as the sovereign? Choosing a successor would enhance the sovereign's immersion in his duties--he's have to work out his own criteria, which will always be contextual and historically based (the best person right now may no longer be the best person two years from now under changed circumstances), and he'd have to select someone who will not try to compete for power right now, and will even be willing to be marginalized so as to avoid any suggestion of such competition. Now, the sovereign will be relying on advice and intelligence from others, and that might lead to competition and emergent forms of supersovreignty. But he won't be "permitted" to delegate the formal power to name his successor, not in the sense that he will be "forced" to name him but in the sense that only someone he names will be recognized. And we can make part of this constraint the requirement (the only "requirement" of the sovereign, then), that immediately upon taking power he name a successor, so there can never be a succession gap. So, I think this constraint is actually the "immunity" to creeping supersovereignty. So, I might agree that succession in general, as the principle point of vulnerability of any order or institution, is the ground-zero of supersovereignty, but not the singularized succession in the hands of the sovereign himself.

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good--anytime.