Ernst Fraenkel (1941), The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, trans. E. A. Shils, New York: Oxford University Press; reissued by Oxford University Press in 2017 with an introduction by Jens Meierhenrich — DOI-10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716204.001.0001
Key takeaways
Registered from secondary description, not read. What follows is what the publisher’s abstract for the 2017 reissue and the chapter metadata in Crossref say.
- Two states in one. The abstract states the thesis: in National Socialist Germany a normative state, “which protected the legal order as expressed in legislation, decisions of the courts, and decisions of administrative bodies”, coexisted with a prerogative state, “governed by the ruling party, and unrestrained by legal guarantees”.
- Read through the courts. The relation and conflict between the two is analysed through German court decisions and the development of judicial practice. Chapter titles in the reissue include “The Prerogative State”, “The Limits of the Prerogative State” and “The Normative State”.
- Three parts. The legal order; the effect of the parallel structures on politics and society; and the relation between the dual state and German capitalism, asking whether the dual state came out of a crisis of capitalism.
- Written from inside. The abstract calls it the only comprehensive analysis of National Socialism written from within Hitler’s Germany.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-07 at the owner’s request. The owner’s essay “The Organization of Will” cites it for the normative/prerogative distinction and for authority over applicability: the power to decide whether the rules apply at all.
Deferred because nobody here has read it. The entry is written from the
publisher’s description, not from the book.