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This article argues that Jeremy Bentham put forward a distinctive and original theory of representative democracy which can be helpfully analysed through his concept of the ‘deputy’. A deputy, Bent...

The role of resistance in the politics of modern representative democracies is historically contested, and remains far from clear. This article seeks to explore historical thinking on this subject through a discussion of what Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about resistance and its relationship to “representative government” and democracy. Neither thinker is usually seen as a significant contributor to “resistance theory” as this category is conventionally understood. But, in addition to their more familiar preoccupations with securing limitations on the exercise of political authority and averting majority tyranny, both thinkers wrote extensively on the nature and meanings of resistance in “representative governments” or democratic societies. Both thinkers are examined in the context of revolutionary and Napoleonic discussions about the legitimacy of resistance or “right to resist” oppression, and against eighteenth-century discussions of the “spirit of resistance” since Montesquieu. The article notes conceptual distinctions between resistance, revolution and insurrection in the period, and addresses the broader question of the extent to which early nineteenth-century French liberals sought to “institutionalise” principles of resistance within modern constitutional frameworks.

This article examines the political thought of Pierre-Antoine Antonelle, a prominent democrat during the French Revolution. In pamphlets and newspaper articles between 1795 and 1799 he put forth an...

After the revolutionary storm, which had exported Jacobin democracy on the tips of its bayonets and after the epic deeds of the Napoleonic era, which, in the midst of remarkable contradictions, had asserted a number of principles and values of the French Revolution, the moderate or conservative liberal thinkers who wished for the introduction of a representative government and of personal freedom in France and in Italy were faced with the return of the old regime and with attempts of the Restoration to eradicate the reforms of the previous period. The only way these thinkers could save or restore parliamentary institutions and civil rights was to link their efforts to the destinies of the ruling dynasties. In both countries, this move was fiercely opposed, especially by reactionary writers. Hence, this essay will deal with the structure and contours of a debate which set two alignments in opposition, from the time of the Congress of Vienna to the Revolutions of 1820-21 and hinged on the principle ...

Drawing upon archival material, this article offers an overview and discussion of the manner in which the topic of representative democracy was addressed during conferences of the Mont Pelerin Society in the period between 1947 and 1998. I contend that the most common critique of democracy amongst MPS members was that democratic politics has the tendency to lead to interventions in the economy, thus distorting or even destroying the market mechanism. Yet most members were simultaneously convinced that democracy is a necessary condition of individual liberty, which meant that democracy, rather than being either a mere nuisance or an irredeemable obstacle that must be rejected wholesale, posed a genuine problem for them. Whilst at MPS conferences a myriad of solutions to the problem of democracy was explored, one such solution was suggested most often and theorized most thoroughly, namely the imposition of constitutional limits on popular power; a proposal that often amounted to an attempt radically...

SUMMARYThis paper examines the formal filters of the public's political will defended by JS Mill as consistent with the best form of representative government. Holding that institutions must adjust to democratic society, and that democratic society must be improved to achieve wise rule, Mill rejects secret ballots and electoral pledges, and advocates a constitutional council and graduated enfranchisement. He also recommends but does not require the indirect election of the President and a unicameral legislature. Mill's historically sensitive approach puts pressure on interpreters to be sensitive to their own political and social context when applying Mill's ideas. In particular, obviously undemocratic measures such as plural voting should be adjusted to reflect Mill's view that the ratio between legitimacy and competence is constantly changing. The continual readjustment between the powers of masses and elites is the way that Mill's Considerations on Representative Government manage to avoid the now-tradi...

SummaryThis article offers a novel and comprehensive account of Walter Bagehot's political thought. It ties together an interpretation of Bagehot's liberal commitment to norms of discussion and deliberation, with an analysis of Bagehot's extensive arguments about the institutions of representative government. We show how Bagehot's opposition to American-style presidentialism, to parliamentary democracy, and to proportional representation were profoundly shaped by his conceptions of government by discussion, and the rule of public opinion. Bagehot's criticisms of English parliamentarianism, both of its pre-1832 and post-1832 varieties were also motivated by those principles, as was his own proposal for parliamentary reform. By examining the whole range of Bagehot's writings on representative government (not merely his preference for parliamentarianism over presidentialism) and by connecting his institutional recommendations to his liberal principles, we are also able to better clarify Bagehot's position in...

SummaryThis article examines the relationship of Jeremy Bentham and some of his disciples within Romantic Liberalism in the Mediterranean in the early 1820s. By studying the content of Bentham's correspondence with his collaborators and some Spanish political leaders, the text sheds light on Bentham's ideas on constitutional rule, the independence of Latin America and religious tolerance.

Jeremy Bentham is a philosopher who deserves a prominent position in the history of democratic ideas. He not only thought popular rule as a vehicle for materializing his vision of utilitarian society, but also gave us a detailed picture of the basic institutions of the form of democratic governance he envisaged. It is also noteworthy that in his radical system the people, who are the ultimate and undisputable source of all power, are protected from the authoritarian tendencies of state authorities not by a bill of constitutional rights but by a set of enhanced democratic powers that enable them to exercise strict control over their elected representatives. In this essay we present an outline of his ‘unusually liberal’ theory of democracy based on recently published texts and studies as well as a brief assessment of its strong and weak points.

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbe Sieyes, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents’ use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political context of the early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvetius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, ...

Nadia Urbinati,Mill on Democracy. From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, ISBN 0-226-84277-0, 2002 (xii+293pp., Hbk £26.50). Matt Cart...

Along the entire course of that seventeenth century, the great principles of representative government and the rights of conscience were passing through the anguish of conflict and fiery trial (De Quincey).

Historical anniversaries offer useful insights into the way in which societies view their past and in recent years the oppo~unities for such insights have been plentiful, ranging from the extrovert American and Australian bicentennials to the more muted and embarrassed tricentenary of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in Britain and Ireland. In all three cases commemoration has involved evaluation, and evaluation has raised the problem of national identity and national values. The bicentenary of the French Revolution encountered these very same problems, but there is little new in this for historical interpretation of the Revolution has created division since the early years of the nineteenth century. There has been general agreement on its importance as a major turning point in French history, but disagreement over what that turning point led to. For some it marks the end of a defunct social and political order and the beginning of republican democracy; for others it saw the premature end of a reforming monarchy and the beginning of chronic political instability. The memory of revolution is a divided one. For much of the nineteenth century the effect of the Revolution was to polarise political culture in France into left and right, and this polarisation, with all its intricate subdivisions, resurfaced at moments of political crisis in 1830,1848 and 1870-l. The issues of monarchy against representative government, of Catholicism against secular liberalism, of order against social revolution-all of which had been central to the conflict that erupted in the decade after 1789-recurred for over a hundred years. As a result French political culture was intensely historical and the history of the Revolution intensely political.’ The establishment of the Third Republic in the 1870s led to the institutionalisation of the liberal republican view of the Revolution, which saw the roots of its own democracy and secular political culture in the events of 1789-1794. Politicians, such as Gambetta, Simon and Jules Ferry set out to accomplish the work begun in 1789, and the Revolution became a symbol around which to unify the various strands of the republican tradition. In the words of Eric Hobsbawm, ‘By deliberately annexing the revolutionary tradition, the Third Republic either domesticated social revolutionaries (like most socialists) or isolated them (like the anarcho-syndicalists). In turn, it was now able to mobilise even a majority of its potential adversaries on the left in defence of a republic and a past revolution, in a common front of classes which reduced the right to a permanent minority in the nation’.2 The importance of the Revolution was stressed in a variety of ways: not least through the revival of the ~a~~e~~Za~~e as the national anthem and the making of Bastille day into a national public holiday in 1880. Historical commemoration

‘the Image, Phantom, or Representative of the Commonwealth . . .’ (1;: ;51).’ This is how Locke in the Two Treatises describes a supreme executive who, as in the English system of government, has a share also in the legislative power. It is very unusual for Locke in his political writings to employ vocabulary which might be drawn from his epistemological writings and it is intriguing that he should do so when describing the qualities of political representation. Locke is sometimes considered a founding father, even an ideologist, of liberal political thought, in which the ideas of representative government play such a major part. Yet in the Two Treatises there is no explicit and sustained analysis of the notion of representation such as had already been found in Hobbes’s Leviathan. At another level, however, one could argue that a notion of representation is essential to the underlying structure of the argument of the Two Trentises. If one returns to the description of the executive as the ‘image, phantom, or representative of the Commonwealth’ one may discover that it is susceptible to several interpretations. Locke says that such a representative is ‘acted by the will of the Society’ and that ‘thus he has no Will, no Power, but that of the Law’. This usage is akin to what Hanna Pitkin has called ‘symbolic representation’.’ Bound by the framework of taw, the representative executive has no will of his own. He is a symbol of the community and its law. When he acts, what one perceives is an image of the community acting. It is not he whom one sees but a phantom. On another interpretation this passage might suggest a somewhat more positive notion of representation as ‘acting for’ the represented. The executive has no will of his own because he is the agent of the community or the law. As long as the executive acts in the manner directed by the legislative power he is the image and the representative of the community. When he acts in a manner contrary to the will of the legislative or beyond the bounds of his office he ceases to be a representative. He is no longer the image of the community. In both these interpretations of the passage the executive is the representative of the commonwealth because he acts on and reproduces the will of the legislative which is itself a representation of the will of the community and, indirectly, of the will of the individuals composing it. In what ways. however, does the legislative represent the community? How can it too be the image or phantom of the commonwealth’? In attempting to answer this question it might be intriguing to follow up the vocabulary Locke employs in this passage and