Condorcet's democratic Theory of representative government

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 3, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 53-75

  Urbinati, Nadia ^a,b  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

^b NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

Condorcet; Deliberation; French Revolution; Participation; Primary assemblies; Representation; Representative democracy; Sovereignty

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248059787     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885104038990     Document Type: Article

References (100)

1. would like to thank the anonymous readers of the European Journal of Political Theory for their helpful and encouraging comments.
2. The expression democraties immédiates was used by le Marquis de Condorcet in 1790 to distinguish between direct and representative democracy. As I shall explain in what follows, this distinction allowed him to bring the latter within the category of democracy rather than the category of aristocratic government or mixed government, and distance his position from that of Sieyes and the American Federalists.
3. Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1989) The Spirit of the Laws, tr. Anne M. Choler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone, book 2, ch. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1987) On the Social Contract or Principles of Political Rights, in Basic Political Writings, tr. Donald A. Cress, book 1, ch. 6. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
5. Bernard Manin (1997) The Principles of Representative Government, p. 232. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. On the negative judgment of democracy, and Athens as its classical and only example in particular, see Luciano Guerci (1979) Liberia degli antichi e libertà dei moderni, pp. 47-80. Naples: Guida.
7. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts (1994) Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought, pp. 179-93. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
8. On the two antithetical views of democracy in Schumpeter's work: John Medearis (2001) Joseph Schumpeter's Two Theories of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Medearis argues that, even though we conventionally connect Schumpeter's name to a conservative and elitist conception of democracy, Schumpeter 'had' not one but two views of democracy, one of which was radical or 'transformational'. I think that this reasoning is somehow misleading because it suggests that Schumpeter held also a radical conception of democracy. Yet Schumpeter did not hold a radical view of democracy (the Rousseauian paradigm); rather he assumed this radical view to be the norm of democracy in order to prove his theory of democracy as electoral competition by and selection of the political elite. He did more or less what Vilfredo Pareto and Robert Michels did before him: he endorsed a superlative view of democracy just to stress that democracy is either pure utopia or an ideological fiction created by the ruling class. Schumpeter, Pareto and Michels made the radical political culture of their times (and the Socialist parties that backed it) play a conservative role. They adopted, as it were, a guerrilla strategy and fought their main adversaries with their adversaries' weapons. This made them unquestionably different from the traditional conservatives of their time, and as much radical as their ideological antagonists.
9. Giovanni Sartori (1965) Democratic Theory, p. 108. New York: Praeger. This statement does not appear in the 2nd and revised edn.
10. Manin (n. 3), p. 237. Although, the 'people' is certainly a much larger entity in our own day than it was in the eighteenth century . . . there has been no significant change in the institutions regulating the selection of representatives and the influence of the popular will on their decisions once in office, (p. 236) The name of Sieyes is written in three ways: Sieyes, Siéyès, and Sieyès. I followed Pasquale Pasquino's suggestion and chose the orthography with no accent:
11. Pasquino(1998) Sieyes et l'invention de la constitution m France, p. 197 (preface n. i). Paris: Odile Jacob.
12. Roberto Gargarella (1998) has pointed to this problem in a convincing way and related the crisis of political representation to the canonical definition and implementation of representative government: 'Full Representation, Deliberation, and Impartiality', in Jon Elster (ed.) Deliberative Democracy, pp. 260-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. Jürgen Habermas himself does not challenge the canon. However his theory of deliberation is rooted in the principle of popular sovereignty and this prevents it from being a mere illustration of the electoral techniques of aggregation and mediation of interests. Finally, anchoring deliberation on the principle of popular sovereignty allows Habermas to indicate a way out of parliamentarianism and offers me a conceptual basis for arguing that the revision of Rousseau's paradigm of sovereignty, not the renunciation of the idea of popular sovereignty, is the premise for questioning the main tenet of both electoral democracy and the mixed-government model that representation has an unredeemable democratic nature.
14. P.-J.-B. Buchez and P.-C. Roux (1836) Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Francaise, ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales depuis 1789 jusqu'en 1815, vol. 24, p. 101. Paris: Paulin Libraire. The Girondins held the majority in the committee chaired by Condorcet. Although Condorcet was not a party man, Brissot's party backed his plan when the two wings of the Convention split and the Montagnards radicalized their hostility to Condorcet's plan. On the independence of Condorcet from the parties, and particularly the Girondins, see
15. Marcel Dorigny (1989) 'Condorcet, libéral et girondin', in Pierre Crépel and Christian Gilain (eds) Condorcet mathématicien, économiste, philosophe, homme politique: Colloque international, pp. 333-40. Paris: Minerve. On Condorcet's authorship of the plan see
16. Franck Alengry (1973) Condorcet : Guide de la Ŕvolution Française, Théoricien du Droit constitutionnel et Précurseur de la Science sociale, pp. 189-93. New York: Burt Franklin (repr. of 1904 edn).
17. For a helpful depiction of the political environment within which the convention was elected and the constitution written and discussed see Elisabeth Badinter and Robert Badinter (1988) Condorcet: Un intellectuel en politique, pp. 483-540. Paris: Fayard. The distinction between mono-archy and poly-archy was devised by Sieyes in the course of his dispute with Thomas Paine on monarchy (which Sieyes saw as legitimate) and the republics (which Paine and Condorcet saw as the only legitimate form of government). Gary Kates has proposed a useful reconstruction and an excellent analysis of the Paine-Sieyes polemic and its impact on Paine's second part of
18. The Rights of Man in Kates (1989) 'From Liberalism to Radicalism: Tom Paine's Rights of Men', Journal of the History of Ideas 50: 581-7. As for Condorcet's position in that polemic, a letter to Sieyes he wrote in early July 1791 has been recently published and commented
19. on by Jacques Guilhaumou (1997) 'Condorcet-Sieyès: Une amitié intellectuelle', in Anne-Marie Chouillet and Pierre Crépel (eds) Condorcet: Homme des Lumières et de Révolution, pp. 223-34. Fontenay-aux-Roses: ENS Editions.
20. Condorcet, 'Aux citoyens français, sur la nouvelle constitution' (June 1793),
21. Nicolas de Caritat Marquis de Condorcet (1968) œuvres: Nouvelle impression en facsimile de l'édition Paris 1847-1849, 12 vols, vol. 12, pp. 651-75.
22. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1968, 12: 651-75.
23. Robert Michels (1962) Political Parties, tr. Eden and Cedar Paul, p. 112. New York: Free Press.
24. Keith Michael Baker (1975) Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics, pp. 243-4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
25. For an interesting reconstruction of the place of Condorcet in post-Second World War political historiography, liberal and radical, see Gabriele Magrin (2001) Condorcet: Un constitutionalismo democratico, pp. 7-28. Milan: Franco Agneli.
26. See lain McLean and Fiona Hewitt, introduction to Condorcet (1994) Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory, tr. and ed. lain McLean and Fiona Hewitt, pp. 32-48. Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
27. Kenneth J. Arrow (1963) Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd edition, pp. 94-5. New Haven: Yale University Press.
28. Bernard N. Grofman and Scott L. Feld (1988) 'Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective', American Political Science Review 82: 567-76. An interesting discussion on Rousseau's and Condorcet's views of democracy can be found in
29. David M. Estlund, Jeremy Waldron, Bernard Grofman and Scott L. Feld (1989) 'Democratic Theory and the Public Interest: Condorcet and Rousseau Revisited', American Political Science Review 83: 1317-40.
30. A recent criticism of Condorcet's rationalism and cosmopolitanism is in Will Kymlicka (2001) Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship, ch. 10. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For a sketch of the familiar image of Condorcet as 'the embodiment of the cold, oppressive enlightenment' in contemporary political theory, see
31. Emma Rothschild (2002) Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment, ch. 7. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
32. 'Is there any sense in studying the proposals of a leader who lost?' McLean seems to be asking when he compares the winner Madison and the loser Condorcet; his answer points to the jury theorem, which actually seems to be the only lasting and valuable contribution made by this 'man of many parts'.McLean and Hewitt (n. 15), pp. 73-4; but see above all Baker (n. 13), pp. 383-6.
33. Condorcet epitomizes the 'incompatibility within revolutionary discourse between, on the one hand, the rationalist discourse of the social that found its roots in the physiocrats and the Scottish school and, on the other, the voluntarist discourse of political will that found its principal source in Rousseau's reworking of classical republicanism and the theory of absolute sovereignty . . . Condorcet's idea of "political redemption through reason" was as unrealistic as his vision of a society inhabited by rational individuals',
34. Keith Michael Baker (1989) 'Condorcet' in A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, ed. François Furet and Mona Ozouf, tr. Arthur Goldhammer, p. 209. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
35. For a recent criticism of the image of democracy as citizens' co-presence see Iris Marion Young (2000) Inclusion and Democracy, p. 126. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For a disillusioned defence of a realistic view of representative government see
36. John Dunn (2000) The Cunning of Unreason: Making Sense of Politics. London: Basic Books.
37. Maximilien Robespierre commented that the primary assemblies were so pervasive that they would cause the citizens to be disgusted with participation and be brought to 'famine, because it [the plan] does not even dream of an indemnity for the time that the people devote to public business instead of subsidizing their families' (cited in H. Archambault De Montfort (1915) Les Idées de Condorcet sur le suffrage, p. 205. Paris: Société Francaise d'Imprimerie et de Librairies).
38. Condorcet, 'Exposition des principes et des motifs du Plan de constitution', in Condorcet (n. 12),vol. 12,p. 335. The 'Exposition' was part of the Plan de Constitution, présenté à la Convention nationale les 15 et 16 février 1793 as an introduction to the Projet de Déclaration des droits naturels, civils et politiques des hommes, and the Projet de constitution française. The 'Exposition' and some parts of the project of constitution have been translated in McLean and Hewitt (n. 15), with the titles 'A Survey of the Principles underlying the Draft Constitution (1793)' (pp. 190-227) and 'Outline for the French Constitution (1793)' (pp. 228-34) respectively. Hereafter I will cite from both the French and the English texts.
39. Scholars attribute the term representative democracy to Alexander Hamilton, who used it in a 1777 letter to Governor Morris (Pierre Rosanvallon (1998) Le Peuple introuvable: Histoire de la représentation démocratique en France, p. 11 n. 2. Paris: Gallimard). In France (and therefore in Europe) the word probably appeared for the first time in 1787-8
40. in Condorcet's Lettres d'un bourgeois de New-Haven a un citoyen de Virginie (n. 12), vol. 9, even if its usage became more familiar after 1792, with the fall of the monarchy and the election of the new convention to give France a republican constitution
41. (see Gary Kates (1985) The Cercle Social, the Girondins, andthe French Revolution, esp. ch. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press)
42. In both countries, the implementation of representative democracy began at the local level-township government in New England, and municipal government in Paris after 1789. The main theorists of representative democracy, Jefferson, Paine, Brissot and Condorcet, agreed on some basic issues: that state institutions should be organized so as to facilitate the coexistence of representation and participation; that popular conventions were a model of sovereignty in action or regulated sovereignty as opposed to both extralegal exceptionality and immutability; and that decentralization, but not necessarily federalism which seemed to be more an expediency to cope with a large territorial state than a value of its own, was a condition of political liberty.
43. See, respectively, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, 'Dire sur la question du veto royal' (7 Sept. 1789) in (1985) Écrits politiques, ed. Roberto Zapperi, p. 236. Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines. Rosanvallon (n. 23), p. 49. By Sieyes see also 'Bases de l'ordre social ou série raisonnée de quelques idées fondamentales de l'état social et politique (an III)' published in Pasquino (n. 7), p. 186.
44. According to Sieyes, 'pure' democracy meant 'raw' (brute) democracy since it resembled raw materials before human labour transformed and refined them. It meant direct rule, but also an inferior or less perfect way of ruling. It was a system that fit societies that were not yet 'civilized' because they were unfamiliar with the division of labour and a work ethic, still attracted by 'passe-tempts agréables' and not appreciative of industry and the abundance of artificial goods stimulated by commerce; Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, 'Observations sur le rapport du comité de constitution, concernant la nouvelle organization de la France' (2 Oct. 1789) in (n. 25), p. 262.
45. 'L'intérêt commun, l'amélioration de l'état social lui-même, nous crient de faire du gouvernement une profession particulière';
46. Sieyes (n. 26), p. 262.
47. Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, Observations sur le rapport du comité de constitution, concernant la nouvelle organization de la France (Ibid.) p. 250. It is well known that Sieyes applied to politics Adam Smith's social philosophy and in particular the criterion of the division of labour (Pasquino (n. 7), ch. I). However, in the context of politics, the concept of'function' has inegalitarian implications because it means 'separation' among and hierarchy within the 'profession' of the electors and that of the elected, and results into an asymmetry of power; it implies, as Sieyes himself wrote, the distinction between active and passive citizenship; see
48. Paul Bastid (1970) Sieyes et sa pensee, p. 370. Paris: Hachette .
49. Patrice Gueniffey (1993) Le Nombre et la raison: La Révolution française et les élections, p. 149. Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
50. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, Part II (1792), in
51. (1989) Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick, p. 170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
52. See respectively, Sieyes (n. 26), p. 263;
53. Paine (n. 30), pp. 167-70. Paine was a member of the comité de constitution chaired by Condorcet and the co-editor with Condorcet of Le Républicain ou le Défenseur du gouvernement représentatif (July 1792); on his impact in Condorcet's constitutionalism see Alengry (n. 10), pp. 197, 211-14.
54. Paine (n. 30), p. 170.
55. Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes, Instructions données par S.A.S. Monseigneur le duc d'Orléans, . . . suivie de Délibérations àprendre dans les assemblées de bailliages (1789) in
56. Sieyes (1989) œuvres de Sieyes, éd. Marcel Dorigny, 3 vols, vol. i, p. 68 (document 4). Paris: Edhis.
57. Lucien Jaume (1990) Échec au libéralisme: Les Jacobins et T Etat, p. 20. Paris: Editions Kimé. Condorcet used the term 'droit negative' (n. 23), p. 78.
58. Condorcet's model was the Constitution of Pennsylvania (whose text was drafted by two of his friends, Paine and Benjamin Franklin) which instituted the council of the censors (Art. 47). The procedure of constitutional revision in ordinary times was, however, indirect in the sense that the citizen formulated the question so as to check whether the majority thought there was agreement on the proposal of having an amendment.
59. 'Opinion was discovered by both the French and the American Revolutions, but only the latter - and this shows once more the high rank of its political creativity - knew how to build a lasting institution for the formation of public views into the very structure of the republic'; Hannah Arendt (1977) On Revolution, p. 228. London: Penguin Books (originally publ., 1963).
60. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Ibid.) p. 255.
61. Paine (n. 30), pp. 171-2.
62. 'We also needed to warn the people against the dangers of profound indifference which often follows revolutions, against the effects of the slow and secret abuses which eventually corrupt human institutions . . . We therefore felt it necessary to establish within the constitution a means of reform which was independent of the people's request and which would therefore take place at fixed intervals'; Condorcet (n. 22), p. 407 (tr. p. 223).
63. 'Ce respect pour les lois, ressort nécessaire dans une nation libre, n'est pas un enthousiasme stupide pour les lois établies, une superstition politique qui suspende les progrés de la raison . . . Ce sentiment est la convinction intime qu'il importe au salut public que la loi, tant qu'elle subsiste, soit exécutée; c'est celui qui animait Socrate, lorsque, victime d'un jugement inique, il refusait de s'y soustraire par la fuite';
64. Condorcet, 'Aux amis de la liberté, sur les moyens d'en assurer la durée' (7 Aug. 1790), in (n. 12), vol. 10, p. 180. 41.
65. Condorcet (n. 23), vol. 9, p. 3;but see also his 'Exposition' (n. 22), pp. 340-1
66. (tr. pp. 192-3). As noticed by Catherine Kintzler (1984) Condorcet: L'Instruction publique et la naissance du citoyen, p. 46. Paris: Le Sycomore, he thought of reason as reason in action, not just as a form for action. Thus he derived rights from the assumption that reason is fallible. Rights were simultaneously preservative and progressive: they recognized the fact that reason can and should revise mistakes. Anticipating Habermas's view, Condorcet thought that deliberative democracy was consistent with and received the dual movement of rationality as an actuating procedure and a critique of its own outcomes.
67. Carl Schmitt (1994) The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, tr. Ellen Kennedy, p. 38. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press (originally publ. 1923).
68. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Ibid.) pp. 10-17.
69. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Ibid.) p. 42.
70. McLean and Hewitt (n. 15), p. 32.
71. Condorcet, Essai sur l'application de l'analyse àla probabilité des d́cisions rendues àla pluralité des voix,: Discours préliminaire, in (1986) Sur les élections et autres texts, pp. 21-9. Paris: Fayard (originally published 1785). Cesare Beccaria based his justification of habeas corpus and fair trial on two crucial premises: the delimitation within the legal domain of the spheres of legislation, application and enforcement of the laws respectively; and the depersonalization of the act of judgement. The principle of depersonalization in relation to the 'preferences' and 'emotions' of the judge (hence the claim that forensic cases must be based on verifiable facts and testimonies) led Beccaria to conceptualize judgement in the court in terms of a syllogism of the first figure: 'In ogni delitto si deve fare dal giudice un sillogismo perfetto: la maggiore dev'essere la legge générale, la minore l'azione conforme o no alia legge, la conseguenza la liberta o la pena';
72. Cesare Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, p. 22. Rome: Newton (originally published 1764). On the role of Beccaria in the evolution of the theory of punishment as part of the theory of right and the rule of law in Condorcet's thought see Baker (n. 13), pp. 230-33 and Magrin (n. 14), pp. 56-9.
73. The jury theorem claims that, provided everyone has an equal vote and uses it independent from others, and provided that each voter has a 50-50 chance of getting the right answer, the majority has more chance of being right than any single member of the group. 'Les décisions du jury, comme celles du suffrage politique, doivent en retour être de même nature: droites et conformes àla raison'; Pierre Rosanvallon (1992) Le Sacre du citoyen: Histoire du suffrage universel en France, p. 176. Paris: Gallimard.
74. Condorcet (n. 22), p. 354 (tr. P. 199).
75. Condorcet (n. 23), p. 8.
76. See Kintzler (n. 41), pp. 17-22.
77. Condorct (n. 46), p. 101.
78. Condorcet, Sur l'instruction publique (1791-1792) and Vie de Monsieur Turgot (1783), of which I am using the edition published in 1786, pp. 226.
79. Condorcet, 'Examen sur cette question: Est-il utile de diviser une assemblée nationale en plusieurs chambres' (1789), in (n. 12), vol. 9, p. 344.
80. In the 'Exposition' of the constitutional plan, he submitted to the assembly three methods for constraining the power of a mono-assembly system, all of them based on time delay or constraint over urgency: dividing up the time of discussion by requiring that 'all legislative acts . . . will be debated twice' the first time in order to see whether the issue is to be accepted for consideration; dividing up the assembly into two 'big committees' so that each of them discusses, but does not vote on, the proposal separately; the third way consisted in requiring two-thirds of the votes in a named ballot 'to declare a matter urgent and to dispense with the legally prescribed intervals'; Condorcet (n. 22), pp. 361-4 (tr. pp. 202-3).
81. From a manuscript annotation written by Condorcet during his chairmanship of the comité de constitution, quoted in Magrin (n. 14), p. 145.
82. On the 18th-century evolution of the theory of natural rights into politically constructed rights and the role of the French physiocrats in facilitating this evolution see Jürgen Habermas (1974) Theory and Practice, tr.John Viertel, pp. 83-4. Boston: Beacon Press.
83. Lucien Jaume (1989) Le Discours jacobin et la démocratie, pp. 309-10. Paris: Faynard.
84. An extremely lucid exposition of the role of representation and coordination played by Turgot's plan is to be found in Condorcet, in particular pp. 136-51.
85. Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville (1789) Plan de conduite pour les d́putés aux Etats généraux, p. 237. Paris. One of the reasons Condorcet and the Girondins paid so much attention to regulating the work of the primary assemblies was that they wanted to make all the regions of the country perfectly equal and reduce the political role that Paris had in determining the whole country's expression of popular sovereignty.
86. Augustin Cochin (1979) L'Esprit de jacobinisme: Une interpretation sociologique de la Revolution française, pp. 80-1. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
87. The idea of the two registers of politics, constitutional and ordinary, the former qualitatively superior to the latter, derives from a notion of political autonomy as absolute creation of the will, in Rousseau's sense. For a 'liberal' rendering of this dualism see Jon Elster (1996) Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality, pp. 93-4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
88. Condorcet, 'Idées sur le despotisme, àl'usage de ceux qui prononcent ce mot sans l'entendre' (1789), in (n. 12), vol. 9, pp. 147-52. On the educational and egalitarian function of the primary assemblies see the sympathetic description of one of the first of Condorcet's biographers,
89. Léon Cahen (1904) Condorcet et la Révolution française, p. 68. Paris: Félix Alcan.
90. On the 'liberal' role played by the primary assemblies see Fernanda Mazzanti Pepe (1991) 'Condorcet e Brissot: Sul modello girondino di sistema rappresentativo', in Carlo Carini (ed.) La rappresentanza tra due rivoluzioni (1789-184.8), pp. 51-91. Florence: Centro Editoriale Toscano Interuniversitario di Storia del Pensiero e delle Istituzioni Rappresentative.
91. Condorcet, 'Réponse àl'Adresse aux Provinces, ou Réflexions sur les écrits publiés contre l'assemblée nationale' (1790), in (n. 12), vol. 9, p. 530.
92. To my knowledge, the article that offers the best analysis of the local and national meaning of primary assemblies is Mazzanti Pepe (n. 62), pp. 64-9.
93. An analysis of the difference between Condorcet and Sieyes based on Sieyes' speech of 1795 was first proposed by Alengry (n. 10), pp. 194, 482-3, and then by Paul Bastid (1939) Les Discours de Sieyès dans les débats constitutionnels de l'An III (2 et 18 Thermidor): Édition critique avec une introduction et des notes, p. 59 n. 36. Paris: Librairie Hachette.
94. By 1789, Sieyes had expressed his strong disagreement with the admirers of the United States, and accused them of attempting to make France into 'une infinité de petites démocraties, qui ne s'uniroient ensuite que par les liens d'une confédération générale . . . Le peuple ou la nation ne peut avoir qu'une voix, celle de la législature nationale'; Sieyes (1985, in n. 25), pp. 234, 238. The most informative work on Sieyes in the English language is by Murray Forsyth (1987) Reason and Revolution: The Political Thought of the Abbé Sieyes, esp. chs 7, 8 and 9 on Sieyes's theory of representation and his project of representative government. New York: Leicester University Press.
95. 'Voici son [Condorcet's] plan: une représentation federative qui fait les lois, un conseil représentatif 'qui les exécute. Une représentation générale, formée des représentations particulières de chacun des départements, n'est plus une représentation, mais un congrès'; Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just, 'Discours sur la Constitution de la France' (24 April 1793), in (1976) Théorie politique, ed. Alain Liénard, p. 190. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
96. Sieyes (1985, in n. 25), p. 238. We can say of Sieyes whatjaume said of Robespierre: he used 'des propos de Rousseau tournés contre la Représentation, pour affirmer que "'la volonté générale" est . . . dans le "pouvoir législatif" élu!'Jaume (n. 57), p. 296.
97. Condorcet (n. 22): Projet de constitution, Titre IV, Art. 11.
98. Condorcet (n. 22), p. 347.
99. 'Dans cette politique de la raison, la contradiction entre inaliénabilité et indivisibilite peut en principe être résolue: en définitive, Condorcet est. . .le seul ày parvenir'; Jaume (n. 57), p. 311.
100. R. Carré de Malberg (1920) Contribution àla Théorie générale de l'Etat, 2 vols, vol. 2, p. 169 n. Paris: Librairie de la Société du Recueil Sirey.