Analysis Of The Disciplinary Revolution By Philip Gorski

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Philip S. Gorski, the author of”The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Growth of State Power in Early Modern Europe”, is a comparative- historical sociologists. His works mainly focus on modern and pre-modern Europe, specifically on the areas of state formation and secularization which is mainly anchored on the interaction and relationship between religion and politics1. The book “The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Growth of State Power in Early Modern Europe” is one of his recent works which was published in 2003. As this paper progresses, a brief background and summary of the main points presented by Philip Gorski in his article is presented. It is followed by an expansion of the author’s original points on how the Dutch Republic qualifies as a strong state in spite of not meeting the standards of the bellicist theory, by presenting the loopholes of state centralization vis-à-vis decentralization. Then, some inadequacies of the author’s points will be discussed. This paper is a review and/ or critique of the second chapter of the abovementioned book. This chapter is entitled Disciplinary Revolution from Below in the Low Countries which, in a nutshell, examines the new state that emerged after the Dutch Revolt- the Dutch Republic. In this chapter, Gorski explained that despite the fact that economic power was one of the sources of strength of the Dutch Republic, he made it a point that the Republic was not a centralized state and it did not have a