Pacts or “social contracts” form the basis of sovereignty in many early modern theories of political authority, and in Pufendorf’s too. Most such theories treat the pact as the means by which a pre-existing right—for example, divine right, or the natural right of individuals grounded in their strength, reason, or property—is transferred to a sovereign on the condition that the right be protected, to be rescinded if it is not. For Pufendorf, however, there is no pre-existing right since the sovereignty pact creates a new right—the right to issue unchallengeable commands for the purposes of achieving social peace—by instituting two new moral personae: the citizen who obeys the sovereign in exchange for protection, and the sovereign invested with the right of absolute command to provide social peace. Since Pufendorf’s sovereignty is constituted not by a prior moral right, but rather by the capacity to exercise unchallengeable authority for the end of social peace, there is no naturally rightful form of government. Pufendorf thus takes a neutral and pluralistic view of the three traditional forms of government—monarchical, aristocratic and democratic—insofar as each is capable of exercising the capacity for sovereign rule.

Chapter 13: Becoming a Strategic Reader. This chapter focuses on the development of the strategic reader, rather than strategies themselves. Strategic readers automatically and routinely apply combinations of effective and appropriate strategies, depending on reader goals, reading tasks, texts being read, and strategic processing abilities. Strategic readers are also aware of their comprehension success in relation to reading goals and apply sets of strategies appropriately to enhance comprehension with difficult texts. Becoming a strategic reader is challenging and requires considerable instruction and support. The chapter reviews research involving several instructional approaches to develop strategic processing, including Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), Questioning the Author, Transactional Strategies Instruction (TSI), Promoting Adolescent Comprehension of Text (PACT), and Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI). The chapter then links strategic reading to the challenges of advanced “reading to learn” goals, and concludes with implications for instruction.