In this chapter I propose to revisit the current concept and the eighteenth-century theory of enlightened absolutism through a case study devoted to the contributions of Joseph von Sonnenfels (1733–1817), whose place in the pantheon of enlightened reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, despite qualifications and shifts of accent, is still indisputable. On the basis of texts by Sonnenfels written during the early stages of his career as professor of Polizey- und Kameralwissenschften at the University of Vienna, I shall concentrate on three related themes. These are, first, the theoretical principles that underlay his scientific study of the state, understood by him as the precondition of good administration; second, his idea of what good administration comprises; third, his proposition that a state capable of providing such administration may reasonably expect broad acceptance among the population. This combination amounts to a theory of monarchical legitimacy put forward in the context of the Central European Enlightenment. The need for a fresh look at the subject and my approach to it derives from recent developments in the relevant historiography.

The first of these inspirations comes from a volume whose focus is similar to the current one. In their introduction to Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment (2007), the editors cite Alexander Pope's well-known formula about the futility of ‘contesting’ forms of governments, in order to illustrate the point that for a broad spectrum of important seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political authors what mattered most was effective administration: their ‘substantive concerns … had to do more with war and peace, commerce and empire, private life and public duty, progress or decay, than with debating the rival forms for their own sake’.