The Northern Song Empire (960–1127) was the most spatially integrated and bureaucratically centralized polity in the late medieval world, and its rulers articulated ideological claims to unitary and universal sovereignty. Both its monarchs and ministers shared a discourse of authority that postulated the throne as the only legitimate source of authority, which was not openly challenged by organized blocs of aristocratic, religious, or urban elites. Yet, the Northern Song Empire was much less autocratic in practice than in theory, since monarchs chose to delegate the making of state policy and the civil and military administration of the empire to a hierarchy of central, regional, and local officials, so that intra-bureaucratic dynamics limited arbitrary monarchical action. Using a micro-level case study of the abolition of the Green Sprouts rural credit policy (qingmiao fa 青苗法) in 1085–1086, this article analyzes the debates within the Northern Song imperial bureaucracy about the reach of state power. The court’s anti-reformist high officials were united in their opposition to the policy, and individual ministers used a court-centered discourse of authority to denounce it for undermining the public good of the polity. Yet, its abolition required mobilizing extensive bureaucratic support within the central government and in local administration. By paying closer attention to the contexts and generic constraints of political rhetoric, and the intricacies of bureaucratic dynamics, it is possible to demonstrate more subtle fluctuations within the force fields of socio-political authority at court and in the country.

中文翻译：

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法院与国家

北宋帝国（960-1127 年）是中世纪晚期世界上空间整合度最高、官僚主义最集中的政体，其统治者表达了对统一和普遍主权的意识形态主张。它的君主和大臣都分享权威话语，将王位假定为唯一合法的权威来源，并没有受到有组织的贵族、宗教或城市精英集团的公开挑战。然而，北宋帝国在实践中的专制远没有理论上的专制，因为君主选择将国家政策的制定和帝国的文职和军事管理委托给中央、地方和地方官员的等级制度，因此内部-官僚动态限制了专横的君主行动。本文通过对 1085-1086 年废除青苗法青苗法的微观案例研究，分析了北宋帝国官僚内部关于国家权力范围的争论。朝廷反改革的高官们团结一致反对这一政策，个别大臣利用以朝廷为中心的权威话语谴责它破坏了政体的公共利益。然而，它的废除需要在中央政府和地方行政部门内动员广泛的官僚支持。通过更密切地关注政治修辞的背景和一般约束，以及官僚动态的复杂性，可以在法庭和国家的社会政治权威力场内展示更微妙的波动。