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Reforming Democracy: Constitutional Crisis and Rousseau's Advice to Geneva
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2018
Abstract
Political theorists have relegated Rousseau's writings on Geneva to the category of historical accident, assuming that whatever he had to say about politics was said fully in works like the Social Contract. This has created a widespread impression that Rousseau had little to say about ordinary political practice. In this paper, I take up his dissection of the Genevan constitution in the Letters from the Mountain. A work which has attracted little attention even from historians, the Letters are in fact essential for understanding Rousseau's thoughts on the people's role in democratic government. His proposals for reform give clear content to the abstract arguments about popular sovereignty presented in the Social Contract. Against readings that emphasize Rousseau's distrust of the people, the Letters reveal that Rousseau expected popular sovereignty to take the form of active and routine participation in both legislation and government on the part of ordinary citizens.
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References
1 Giovanni Sartori points out that “there is no Greek classical theory of democracy of the ancients” since thinkers like Plato and Aristotle were highly critical of democratic government. “Rousseau provides the first idealization of the democracy of the ancients” (Sartori, , The Theory of Democracy Revisited [Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1987], 157Google Scholar). See also Miller, James, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 121Google Scholar.
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3 Benjamin Barber's phrase, used to denote a participatory, self-governing, community. Barber refers to Rousseau's argument against representation to highlight the problem that alienation of sovereignty presents for autonomy. See Barber, , Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 145Google Scholar.
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5 Constant, Benjamin, “The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and Their Relation to European Civilization,” in Political Writings, trans. Fontana, Biancamaria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 106Google Scholar, 178. Constant ignores Rousseau's statement that the executive function is always delegated (or represented). But this is likely because he believed, along with many of the authors mentioned in this section, that, given the important role that governmental power was expected to play in his ideal state, the net result of Rousseau's ideas would be despotism.
6 Sartori, Democracy Revisited, 314; see also Shklar, Judith N., Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 181Google Scholar; Urbinati, Nadia, Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 78Google Scholar.
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17 For a detailed treatment of the historical background, see Whatmore, Richard, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.
18 Candaux, Jean-Daniel, introduction to Œuvres complètes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Gagnebin, Bernard and Raymond, Marcel, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964)Google Scholar, clxii (henceforward OC). Tronchin had originally recommended that no action be taken against Rousseau himself, but would later change his stance. See Leigh, R. A., “New Light on the Genesis of the Lettres de la montagne: Rousseau's marginalia on Tronchin,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, no. 94 (1972): 114Google Scholar.
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21 Whatmore, Richard, “Rousseau and the Représentants: The Politics of the Lettres écrites de la montagne,” Modern Intellectual History 3 (2006): 393–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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23 Article VII stated: “The Citizens and Bourgeois conforming to the Edict of May 26, 1707, will have the right to make all such Representations as they judge conducive to the well-being of the State to the Syndics or the General Prosecutor” (OC, 3:845n2). All translations from OC are my own.
24 OC, 3:827n4.
25 Spector, Céline, “Droit de représentation et pouvoir négatif: La ‘garde de la liberté’ dans la Constitution genevoise,” in La religion, la liberté, la justice: Un commentaire des “Lettres écrites de la montagne” de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Bernardi, Bruno, Guénard, Florent, and Silvestrini, Gabriella (Paris: Vrin, 2005), 162Google Scholar.
26 Rousseau to d'Ivernois, in Correspondance complète, ed. Leigh, R. A., vol. 23 (Geneva: Musée Voltaire, 1975), 111–12Google Scholar (my translation).
27 OC, 3:852n2.
28 Fralin, Rousseau and Representation, 164, suggests that this solution was more moderate than Rousseau's call for the return of regular popular assemblies. But given the militia's role in opposing the government in 1737, this seems unlikely.
29 OC, 3:852n3.
30 Richard Tuck has recently argued that this distinction is the chief innovation of Rousseau's political theory. See Tuck, , The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 21Google Scholar. See also Crignon, “La critique de la représentation politique,” 490–91.
31 Fralin labels these moments “extraordinary,” meant to occur only at the institution of a new government (Rousseau and Representation, 109). But Rousseau clearly expected them to be a routine part of politics in all states. Shklar's description of these assemblies as “public acts of civic loyalty … [that do not] call upon the people, for all its sovereignty, to make new laws or exercise governmental functions” is also a distortion (Men and Citizens, 181; emphasis added).
32 Miller, Dreamer of Democracy, 120, states that “every legitimate republic” according to Rousseau “must, at base, be simple: a pure democracy.” So too Ellenburg, Rousseau's Political Philosophy, 159.
33 Vaughan, Political Writings, 187, and, more recently, Scott, John, “Rousseau's Anti-Agenda-Setting Agenda and Contemporary Democratic Theory,” American Political Science Review 99 (2005): 137–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, are the most representative examples of this camp.
34 Derathé, Robert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la science politique de son temps, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1995), 297Google Scholar (my translation).
35 Scott, “Rousseau's Anti-Agenda-Setting Agenda,” 141, acknowledges that the strongest evidence for the contrary position comes from a passage in the Ninth Letter where Rousseau calls the government's exclusive right over legislative initiative “very reasonable,” stating that “it would be generally impossible for [the democracy] to maintain itself if the Legislative Power could always be set in motion by each of those who compose it.”
36 Putterman, “Rousseau on Agenda-Setting,” 467; Melzer, Natural Goodness of Man, 237.
37 Putterman, “Rousseau on Agenda-Setting,” 467; see also Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People, 42, 45. Here, however, Putterman notes that the role of the agenda-setting elite is “functionally dissimilar” to that of the original législateur (71).
38 Putterman, Ethan, “Rousseau on the People as Legislative Gatekeepers, not Framers,” American Political Science Review 99 (2005): 149–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Ibid., 150. The position Putterman adopts in Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People is less clear on whether governments must always set the legislative agenda or merely can do so when necessary.
40 Cohen explains the restriction of legislative initiative as a means of providing “some sort of initial review of the merits of legislative proposals,” adding that “if the government refuses to propose laws that are desired, then the people can get rid of it” (A Free Community of Equals, 175; see also Putterman, Rousseau, Law and the Sovereignty of the People, 60). While correct, I believe that this argument does not adequately address the concerns of authors who regard this restriction as a limit on popular sovereignty.
41 Gabriella Silvestrini, “Genève comme modèle dans la pensée politique de Rousseau,” in La religion, la liberté, la justice, 219.
42 Shklar states that “the fewness and antiquity of laws is the very best proof of their validity,” according to Rousseau. Though she also insists that “the acts of periodic recollection are not a blind adherence to tradition as such,” this claim is hard to square with the previous one, as well as with her overall description of periodic assemblies in Men and Citizens, 181. See Rousseau's statement in SC, I.7 [2]: “there is not, nor can there be, any kind of fundamental law that is obligatory for the body of the people” (emphasis added; see also II.1 [3]). This greatly qualifies even the role of the législateur, who is meant to draw up such laws. See SC, II.12 [2] on the content of fundamental laws, and Rousseau's repeated argument against the binding nature of tradition.
43 Scott, “Rousseau's Anti-Agenda-Setting Agenda,” 141.
44 As a final note, it ought to be mentioned that the vast majority of Geneva's inhabitants were not citizens. Rousseau's defense of the “people's” sovereignty in the Letters, therefore, was practically restricted to defending the sovereignty of “1,500 men out of … 18,500” (Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva, 18; see also Leigh, “New Light on the Genesis of the Lettres,” 117). However, in the unpublished History of the Government of Geneva, composed at the same time as the Letters, Rousseau commented approvingly that in the early days of the republic there had been no natifs, a legal category comprising persons born to immigrant parents (habitants) who, for this reason, lacked political rights. Originally, he noted, all children born in Geneva automatically acquired full citizen rights and were eligible for public office. See Rousseau, “History of the Government of Geneva,” in Collected Writings, 9:113. For a full discussion of these legal categories see Kirk, “Genevan Republicanism,” 273.
45 Citations are to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy,” in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 3–38.
46 Masters, Political Philosophy of Rousseau, 402n186 (emphasis added).
47 In a qualified (“common and in many respects imprecise”) analogy, however, which in itself suggests the provisional nature of Rousseau's ideas in this work (PE, 6). Cf. SC, III.11.
48 The classic “epistemic” interpretation is Feld, Scott and Grofman, Bernard, “Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective,” American Political Science Review 82 (1988): 567–76Google Scholar. For “intellectualist” and “procedural” see Silvestrini, “Genève comme modèle,” 228; for “concrete” or “effective reality” see Crignon, “La critique de la représentation politique,” 493.
49 Melzer, Natural Goodness of Man, 239. Denise Schaeffer also states that in the Political Economy Rousseau “recommends a program of civic education that relies heavily on manipulation and illusions” (Schaeffer, , Rousseau on Education, Freedom and Judgment [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014], 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
50 Melzer, Natural Goodness of Man, 238.