Abstract

Althought Otto Hintze's thought is focused on the administrative constitution of the States, a relevant part of it concerns the understanding of the influence exercised by the international context upon the variety and discontinuity of the institutional developments of the different States. Taking this influence into account, Hintze acknowledges an important role to the spatial dimension. This essay analyses this role, first by inquiring into the international elements of the interior political development, then by reading the meaning and the limits of the geopolitical opposition between the «English type» and the «Continental type».