At the International Congress of Historians in Rome in 1955 an interesting phenomenon was to be observed. In the conference hall where the problem of European absolutism was being discussed, it was said that the estates played no significant part in the making of the modern state, while in another room, where the Commission internationale pour l'histoire des assemblées d'états was meeting, it was taken for granted by the speakers that the estates were a political force to be reckoned with just as was monarchical authority. This was just another instance of the old problem – how to find firm ground for an overall view of the political importance of the estates which would hold good throughout the period of their existence.

Investigations which start from the great achievements of absolute monarchy have seen the estates as playing only a negative role. The scholars who have made up the Commission internationale since 1936 have sought, by comparative studies, to underline the effectiveness of the estates. In the search for the ancestry of parliamentary democracy since the second world war, substantial studies have again been devoted to the estates of central and western Europe, both imperial and territorial or provincial. These studies too have failed to provide a basis for a unanimous view and to bridge the gap in scholarly opinion which has existed for over a century. This is especially true of France and Germany. The dilemma will not be resolved either by overstating the importance of the corporative principle in German constitutional history or by continuing to emphasize the monarchic principle.