The People's Two Powers

Public Opinion and Popular Sovereignty from Rousseau to Liberal Democracy
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-009-68882-6
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Reihe: Ideas in Context

The People's Two Powers revisits the emergence of democracy during the French Revolution and examines how French liberalism evolved in response. By focusing on two concepts often studied separately-public opinion and popular sovereignty-Arthur Ghins uncovers a significant historical shift in the understanding of democracy. Initially tied to the direct exercise of popular sovereignty by Rousseau, Condorcet, the Montagnards, and Bonapartist theorists, democracy was first rejected, then associated with the idea of rule by public opinion by liberals throughout the nineteenth century. This redefinition culminated in the invention of the term 'liberal democracy' in France in the 1860s. Originally conceived in opposition to 'Caesarism' during the Second Empire, the term has an ongoing and important legacy, and was later redeployed by French liberals against shifting adversaries – 'totalitarianism' from the 1930s onward, and 'populism' since the 1980s.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ghins, Arthur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; 1. Rousseau's democracy; 2. Representative democracy during the French revolution; 3. The liberal response: madame de Staël and representative government; 4. Bonaparte and his collaborators: 'democracy purged of all its drawbacks'; 5. The liberal response: Benjamin constant's representative government; 6. Tocqueville's democracy; 7. The first theorists of liberal democracy; Epilogue: liberal democracy in the twentieth century; Biliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Ghins, Arthur
Arthur Ghins is a Chargé de Recherches FNRS at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His work on historical and contemporary debates about democracy and liberalism has appeared in journals such as Political Studies and The Journal of Politics.