Vigilance, denunciation, evaluation

Pierre Rosanvallon; Arthur Goldhammer

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511755835.004

1 - Vigilance, denunciation, evaluation

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 May 2010

Pierre Rosanvallon and

Arthur Goldhammer

Show author details

Pierre Rosanvallon: Affiliation:
Collège de France, Paris
Arthur Goldhammer: Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Vigilance

To be watchful, alert, and on guard are essential attributes of citizenship – attributes present from the beginning, since the ancient ideal of citizenship would have been unimaginable if reduced to mere periodic participation in elections. Vigilance first of all means monitoring: permanent close scrutiny of the actions of government. “A free people,” wrote Anacharsis Cloots during the French Revolution, “is an argus. It sees everything, hears everything, is everywhere, and never sleeps.” Vigilance compensates for the arrhythmia of the ballot box. The people are always at the ready, and the “dormant people” imagined by Locke and Rousseau become a giant ready to pounce. Vigilance in this sense means presence, attentiveness. The political language of the 1960s and 70s favored the term “mobilization”: a militant group was “mobilized” if it was prepared to play its role effectively. Mobilization was not so much a precondition of action as a way of describing a type of presence in the world, a kind of attentiveness to public affairs. Such a disposition is not merely a property of the agent who exhibits it: it enters into the construction of a global property of the public sphere.

Vigilance should also be seen as a mode of action. Though it “produces” nothing by itself, it cannot be dismissed as mere passivity. It defines a particular form of political intervention that involves neither decision-making nor exercise of the will. It rather creates possibilities and sets limits by imposing structure on a general field of action.

Type: Chapter
Information: Counter-Democracy
Politics in an Age of Distrust
, pp. 33 - 56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511755835.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cloots, Anacharsis, Écrits révolutionnaires (1790–1794) (Paris: Champ Libre, 1979), p. 110.Google Scholar

Jullien, François, Traité de l'efficacité (Paris: Grasset, 1997)Google Scholar

Conférence sur l'efficacité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005)

Foucault, Michel, Naissance de la biopolitique (Paris: Gallimard-Seuil, 2004)Google Scholar

Sécurité, territoire, population (Paris: Gallimard-Seuil, 2004)

McCubbins, Matthew D. and Schwartz, Thomas, “Congressional Oversight Overlooked: Police Patrols versus Fire Alarms,” American Journal of Political Science 28 (1984).CrossRef Google Scholar

Baudeau, Abbé, Première introduction à la philosophie économique ou analyse des États policés (1771), in Physiocrates (Paris: Édition Daire, 1846), vol. II, p. 683.Google Scholar

Trosne, Guillaume-François, De l'ordre social (Paris, 1777), p. 88.Google Scholar

Guizot, in Des moyens de gouvernement et d'opposition dans l'état actuel de la France (Paris, 1821).Google Scholar

“The Good Inspector,” in Bardach, Eugene and Kagan, Robert A., Going by the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982)Google Scholar

Jones, Bryan D., Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics: Attention, Choice and Public Policy (The University of Chicago Press, 1994).Google Scholar

Cobb, Roger W. and Elder, Charles D., “The Politics of Agenda-Building: An Alternative Perspective for Modern Democratic Theory,” The Journal of Politics 33, no. 4 (Nov. 1971)CrossRef Google Scholar

McCombs, Maxwell and Shaw, Donald, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass-Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (1972).CrossRef Google Scholar

Gerstlé, Jacques, “Démocratie représentative, réactivité politique et imputabilité,” Revue française de science politique 53, no. 6 (Dec. 2003).CrossRef Google Scholar

Wlezien, Christopher, “The Public as Thermostat: Dynamics of Preferences for Spending,” American Journal of Political Science 39, no. 4 (1995).CrossRef Google Scholar

Dubouis, Louis and Gueydan, Claude, Les Grands Textes du droit de l'Union européenne (Paris: Dalloz, 2002), vol. I, pp. 440–442.Google Scholar

Guilhaumou, Jacques, “Fragments of a Discourse of Denunciation (1789–1794),” in Baker, Keith Michael, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. IV: The Terror (Oxford: Pergamon, 1994)Google Scholar

Aymé, Marcel, Silhouette du scandale [1938] (Paris: Grasset, 1973), p. 34.Google Scholar

Weinberg, Arthur and Weinberg, Lila, The Muckrakers: The Era in Journalism that Moved America to Reform: The Most Significant Magazine Articles of 1902–1912 (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1961)Google Scholar

Chalmers, David Mark, The Social and Political Ideas of the Muckrakers (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1964).Google Scholar

Schultz, Stanley K., “The Morality of Politics: The Muckraker's Vision of Democracy,” The Journal of American History 52, no. 3 (Dec. 1965).CrossRef Google Scholar

Brandeis, Louis D., “the people's lawyer,” writing in Harper's Weekly, observed that “if sunlight is the best disinfectant, the light of publicity is the most effective of policemen.” See Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (1913), new edn (New York: F. A. Stokes, 1932), p. 32Google Scholar

Thompson, John B., Political Scandal, Power and Visibility in the Media Age (London: Polity Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Muhlmann, Géraldine, Une histoire politique du journalisme, XIXe–XXe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004)Google Scholar

Du journalisme en démocratie (Paris: Payot, 2004)

Markovits, Andrei S. and Silverstein, Mark, The Politics of Scandal: Power and Process in Liberal Democracies (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988)Google Scholar

Blic, Damien and Cyril, Lemieux, “Le scandale comme épreuve. Eléments de sociologie pragmatique,” Politix 71 (2005).Google Scholar

Dampierre, Eric, “Thèmes pour l'étude du scandale,” Annales ESC (July–Sept. 1954).Google Scholar

Max, Gluckman, “Gossip and Scandal,” Current Anthropology 4, no. 3 (June 1963)Google Scholar

Arendt, Hannah, Juger: Sur la philosophie politique de Kant (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991).Google Scholar

Bouvier, Jean, Les Deux Scandales de Panama (Paris: Julliard, 1964), p. 204.Google Scholar

Garment, Suzanne, Scandal: The Crisis of Mistrust in American Politics (New York: Times Books, 1991)Google Scholar

Rayner, Hervé, Les Scandales politiques: L'Opération “Mains propres” en Italie (Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2005)Google Scholar

Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent: “Renunciation of secrecy is … the price to be paid for access to exalted status. If one wants to be known, one must be willing to reveal all and hide nothing from the public,” in De la justification: Les Économies de la grandeur (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), p. 226Google Scholar

Bart, and Lefebvre, Rémi, eds., La Proximité en politique: Usages, rhétoriques, pratiques (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003).Google Scholar

Mandeville, Bernard, La Fable des abeilles (1714), remark C. (Paris: Vrin, 1974), p. 58.Google Scholar

Nussbaum, Martha C., Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Braithwaite, John, “Shame and Modernity,” The British Journal of Criminology 33, no. 1 (Winter 1993)CrossRef Google Scholar

Donnelly, Jack, International Human Rights, 2nd edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998)Google Scholar

Junius, , The Letters of Junius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).Google Scholar

Mercer, Jonathan, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 6–9Google Scholar

Brennan, Geoffrey and Pettit, Philip, The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society (Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

Kreps, David M. and Wilson, Robert, “Reputation and Imperfect Information,” Journal of Economic Theory 27, no. 2 (Aug. 1982).CrossRef Google Scholar

Boltanski, Luc, “La dénonciation,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 51 (1984), p. 4CrossRef Google Scholar

Koselleck, Reinhart, Le Règne de la critique [1954] [Paris: Minuit, 1979], pp. 94–95).Google Scholar

Will, Pierre-Etienne, “Le contrôle constitutionnel de l'excès de pouvoir sous la dynastie des Ming,” in Delmas-Marty, Mireille and Will, Pierre Étienne, eds., La Chine et la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 2007)Google Scholar

Yat-Sen, Sun, “La Constitution des cinq pouvoirs,” appendix to Souvenirs d'un révolutionnaire chinois (1925) (Paris, 1933)Google Scholar

Chao-Yuen, Tcheng, L'Évolution de la vie constitutionnelle de la Chine sous l'influence de Sun Yat-Sen et de sa doctrine (1885–1937) (Paris, 1937).Google Scholar

Haskins, Charles Homer, Norman Institutions (New York: F. Ungar, 1960).Google Scholar

Contamine, Philippe and Mattéoni, Olivier, eds., La France des principautés: Les Chambres des comptes, XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: Comité pour l'histoire économique et financière de la France, 1996).Google Scholar

Lascoumes, P. and Galès, Patrick, eds., Gouverner par les instruments (Paris: Presses de Sciences-Po, 2004).Google Scholar

Viveret, Patrick, L'Évaluation des politiques et des actions publiques: Rapport au premier ministre (Paris: La Documentation française, 1989)Google Scholar

Perret, Bernard, L'Evaluation des politiques publiques (Paris: La Découverte, 2001)Google Scholar

Book contents

1 - Vigilance, denunciation, evaluation

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive