Can Popular Sovereignty Be Represented? Jacobinism from Radical Democracy to Populism

Abstract

Contemporary studies mostly understand populism as a reaction to the failures of representative liberal democracies. Yet populism existed at the very inception of modern democracy before it became liberal. I contend that, during the French Revolution, conflicting claims of popular sovereignty gave rise to populism, which was instantiated in the Jacobin theory of Robespierre. The rapid transformation of Jacobinism in the years of the attempted birth of modern democracy (1789-94) tracks the theoretical question at the heart of populism: How can sovereignty be represented for a divided people that have yet to be united in order to exist?

Manifesting the revolutionary people: The Yellow Vest Movement and popular sovereignty

“…It was largely inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract (Robisco, 1993), which was the epicenter of the debates in 1793-1794, not only in the Convention but also in the Parisian sections, where the activity of the Sans-Culottes was concentrated (Soboul, 1962;1963;Manin, 1988). The core of this understanding of popular sovereignty was that the people were the true sovereign, the representatives were only their servants, they had to defend the general interest, under the control of the people, and if they betrayed their mandate, the people could legitimately rise up (McKay, 2022;Rousselière, 2021).…”