Plebiscites, Referendums, and Ballot Initiatives as Institutions of Popular Sovereignty: Rousseau's Influence on Competing Theories of Popular-Vote Processes

Abstract

Popular-vote processes — such as plebiscites, referendums, and initiatives — are frequently understood as Rousseauian instruments of popular sovereignty. Yet, Rousseau did not theorize these devices himself. As a result, he has been claimed by proponents of competing theories of popular-vote processes. Theorists of sleeping sovereignty have claimed Rousseau's distinction between sovereignty and government in support of rare, constitutional referendums. Theorists of direct democracy invoke Rousseau's criticism of representation to demand frequent referendums. Plebiscitarianism casts Rousseau's general will as demanding the unification of the nation in one popularly legitimated leader through top-down plebiscites. Lastly, Condorcet's proposal for the “censure of the people” outlines how the sovereign could initiate popular votes itself in order to check the power of the government. I contend that Condorcet's account provides the most compelling link between Rousseau's account of popular sovereignty and the institutional design of popular-vote processes.

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).…”

“…As was the case during the Revolution, their initial grievances were reformulated as directives from the sovereign people, which representatives must obey in order to regain the people's trust. In this sense, the Yellow Vest Movement proved to be the bearer of an original conception of popular sovereignty: It combined, on the one hand, a claim to hold constituent power (Brito Vieira, 2015;Frank, 2010;Kalyvas, 2005;Rubinelli, 2020), which fueled the demands for recourse to referendums (Abrial et al, 2022), and on the other a negative conception of sovereignty as popular control (Rosanvallon, 2008) already seen in Aristotle (Lane, 2016) but less common in modern theories of sovereignty-a combination akin to Rousseau's conception of popular sovereignty (Garsten, 2010;Hallward, 2023;McKay, 2022;Nikolakakis, 2023). The central ambition of this article will then be to show how this conception of sovereignty enables us to link the political performance of the Yellow Vests (picturing themselves as a manifestation of the entire French people), their reference to the French Revolution, and their demands for popular control-thus shedding new light on the movement, and highlighting one of the possibilities for making use of the concept of popular sovereignty.…”