Cameralism

For single-chamber legislatures, see Unicameralism. For two-chamber legislatures, see Bicameralism. For three-chamber legislatures, see Tricameralism.
Not to be confused with Neocameralism.

Cameralism (German: Kameralismus) was a German science of public administration in the 18th and early 19th centuries that aimed at strong management of a centralized economy for the benefit mainly of the state.[1] The discipline in its most narrow definition concerned the management of the state's finances. Throughout the 18th and the first half of the 19th century, cameralism was influential in Northern European states—for example, in Prussia and Sweden—and its academics and practitioners were pioneers in economic, environmental, and administrative knowledge and technology; for example, cameralist accounting, still used in public finance today.[2][3]

The growing power of centralized state control necessitated centralized systematic information on the nation. A major innovation was the collection, use and interpretation of numerical and statistical data, ranging from trade statistics, harvest reports, and death notices to population censuses. Starting in the 1760s, officials in France and Germany began increasingly to rely on quantitative data for systematic planning, especially regarding long-term economic growth. It combined the utilitarian agenda of "enlightened absolutism" with the new ideas being developed in economics. In Germany and France, the trend was especially strong in cameralism and physiocracy.[4] According to David F. Lindenfeld, it was divided into three: public finance, Oeconomie and Polizei. Here Oeconomie did not exactly mean 'economics', nor did Polizei mean 'public policy' in the modern senses.[5][clarification needed]

  1. ^ "Definition of cameralism in English". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on January 1, 2019. An economic theory prevalent in 18th-cent. Germany, which advocated a strong public administration managing a centralized economy primarily for the benefit of the state.
  2. ^ Koerner, Lisbet (1999). Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674005655.
  3. ^ Monsen 2002, pp. 39–72.
  4. ^ Lars Behrisch, "Statistics and Politics in the 18th Century". Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung (2016) 41#2: 238-257. online Archived 2018-12-14 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Lindenfeld (1997), pp. 18–19.