The People's Two Powers : Public Opinion and Popular Sovereignty from Rousseau to Liberal Democracy

Examines the emergence of democracy and liberalism in modern France, exploring the distinction between public opinion and popular sovereignty. Arthur Ghins considers how democracy was first rejected, then associated with the idea of rule by public opinion by liberals, culminating in the invention of 'liberal democracy' in the 1860s.

The People's Two Powers revisits the emergence of democracy during the French Revolution and examines how French liberalism evolved in response. By focusing on two concepts often studied separately – public opinion and popular sovereignty – Arthur Ghins uncovers a significant historical shift in the understanding of democracy. Initially tied to the direct exercise of popular sovereignty by Rousseau, Condorcet, the Montagnards, and Bonapartist theorists, democracy was first rejected, then redefined by liberals as rule by public opinion throughout the nineteenth century. This redefinition culminated in the invention of the term 'liberal democracy' in France in the 1860s. Originally conceived in opposition to 'Caesarism' during the Second Empire, the term has an ongoing and important legacy, and was later redeployed by French liberals against shifting adversaries – 'totalitarianism' from the 1930s onward, and 'populism' since the 1980s.