If your system of laws is so weak that you can have such internal strife that a little bit of pressure from another country's king is all it takes to annex you, you don't have rule of law. Your civic institutions are supposed to be able to prevent these kinds of circumstances. It's the whole reason they're there, the primary role of the state is to protect you from other states.
So far we've identified these criteria, in order of evolution:
a) A tradition of civic participation
b) A strong state
c) Traditions and rules that prevent would-be tyrants from subverting civic institutions
d) Leadership that respects limits on power defined not by him, but by the nation
D arises out of the first three, if d fails to happen, then you didn't have a-c.
Republican Rome lacked c and therefore d. A and b protected them for awhile, but the tradition wasn't strong enough to prevent devolution into tyranny. Iceland lacked b, so even having direct democracy isn't really enough. You have to have both a and b before it makes any sense to have c.
Small states where everyone knows everyone else are bound by stronger ties than law. You have decision-making processes rather than machinery of state. Rule of law protects the weak from the predations of the strong, if you don't need it, then those institutions won't have a chance to become resilient through constant testing. The first serious challenge to your nascent state will cause it to crumble, as happened in Iceland.
States today tend to have b without a.
Republican Rome definitely had c and d for most of its time; they broke down in the Late Republic, but that just says that progress in the rule of law isn't a one-way ratchet. As, even you have explicitly acknowledged, it wasn't for England, either.
I think its a mistake to view "rule of law" having a "won" state. Like an Empire (another thing Rome and Britain have in common), rule of law is something you have -- as long as you can manage to actively maintain it. When you fail, its gone, and not easy to get back. And even the best efforts toward maintaining it don't have a 100% guarantee, so, over an infinite time horizon, gambler's ruin is a real concern.
Rome had rule of law, until it didn't. England has rule of law, until it doesn't.
England isn't the first to have had it, and England hasn't achieved some state where it is automatically self-maintaining and no longer a matter of concern.
> I don't see why that's so difficult to grasp.
Its not difficult to grasp, its just wrong.
This seems reasonable, but I don't believe this to be correct. As I outlined in the other thread continuation, it's not just about political machinations. It's also about the rest of society and the economy and the judiciary.
If you analyze those in turn, you can see why England succeeded and Rome failed. You don't have to limit your analysis just to certain select states that we consider to have it, you can also look at countries where the rule of law is non-existent or weak and see how those get threatened as well. You can look at countries where it looked strong from the outside then crumbled, and find out where the weaknesses were.
The main Anglosphere nations, in my view, have broken through to a critical point and no tyranny is possible according to current understandings. People can complain about how Obama or Bush or whoever is a fascist, but analyzed, the events complained about will bear no real semblance to the historical events they're trying to draw similarities with.
We could drill down, look at the fundamentals, connect all the dots to each other, I do this all the time in my spare time, but if you're holding on to an existing ideological viewpoint, it won't matter whether we do or don't.
Cromwell damaged English rule of law, but he didn't destroy it. He was able to dissolve Parliament but ultimately could not rule effectively without it. He had popular support of the army but could not fund it properly. The army would have refused orders to act as tax collectors so ultimately Cromwell was simply one more would-be tyrant in a line of English kings who had to limit his ambitions to foreign policy after being frozen out domestically. Which suits the nation fine because foreign policy is exactly what they want him to be pursuing. So long as the army is busy away from home, they're not free to terrorize the legislature or interfere with the political process.
Funding and taxation was a major reason why the English were able to implement rule of law first. A would-be dictator has to be able to enforce his whims, but cannot if the army won't follow his orders or is left to rot, unsupplied on the battlefield.
Parliament in Cromwell's day refused to simply do his bidding. That is a key necessity for protection against dictatorship. A mad tyrant can run around declaring things, but if nobody is listening to him, all he's doing is barking orders. Eventually, they made peace and Parliament offered Cromwell the crown, but he was a dedicated anti-monarchist and refused it, thinking of himself as a dictator in the Roman mold. Despite this, the tug of war between the legislature and the executive continued, just Cromwell managed to get the upper hand for awhile.
After he died, his son Richard became Lord Protector, and the balance of power swung back towards Parliament. "Richard was never formally deposed or arrested, but allowed to fade away. The Protectorate was treated as having been from the first a mere usurpation." The Council of State took back over and invited Charles I's son to claim the throne.
This is how it happens in rule of law countries. Coups do not have the desired effect, your power is going to be circumscribed anyway by tradition, law, and all the other politicians at play that you don't control.
Also you are using a lot of "no true scotsman"-logic. Cromwell wasn't a true dictator since he still had to struggle with parliament. But the same is the case with the Roman emperors. There was an ongoing struggle between the senate and the emperor, and for example the senate deposed Nero, which shows he wasn't a sovereign dictator.
Have you yet provide a concrete explanation of how, exactly, the claim that England had rule of law before other nations (either in a binary sense, or in a continuous sense where England consistently over some significant period of time had a greater degree of "rule of law" than anyone else) is justified?
Because it doesn't seem like there is anything really concrete here.
The continuous sense does exist, but you have to deeply analyze historical events to ascertain distinguishing factors. You have to have analyzed numerous other countries to see how they play out with different polities, different cultures, different geopolitical imperatives. How the Soviets used law, how the Chinese use it. People find all kinds of ways to collect power. Other people oppose them.
Things are cultural and not just codified. You can't just look at a collection of facts and make the determination. Politics is messy. The concrete sense you're looking for doesn't exist. I've laid out a lot of rationale and historical context to lay out what the terrain of rule of law looks like, how it's threatened, protected, and codified; and analyzed four different countries in four different time periods.
This is a lay hobby of mine so I can't claim any kind of authority here. I could understand if you disagree with my findings. But neither of you have offered up any substantive analysis of your own or your own definition. Just isolated incidents in history with no surrounding context. I try to provide that context and it seems like I'm talking to a brick wall. You can't just cherry-pick events and expect that to be very insightful, all people do when they do that is reinforce their existing beliefs.
All of these things are connected, they all contribute to rule of law.