The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France Since the Revolution

Extract

The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France Since the Revolution. By Pierre Rosanvallon. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. 368p. $35.00.

Pierre Rosanvallon thinks about democracy in historical terms, and his investigations of French political experience since the revolution of 1789 hold lessons for democratic thought and practice outside his native country. His latest book to be translated into English adds to a growing reception of his rewarding thought. Though a jazzed-up retitling of the more homely original (literally translated as The French Political Model), this work describes both the strictures placed upon democracy by the French tradition of political centralization and the demands made upon the French state in the name of the free, solidaristic, and mediatory field of civil society.