Democracy in Modern France (review)

Democracy may be a universal concept, but different models have been conceived in its name. In Nick Hewlett's stimulating account, the French version has been distinguished by a belief in the general will inherited from Rousseau, a concept of the people in the form of the proletariat derived from Marx, and a revolutionary tradition of direct action and sudden change. In the Anglo-Saxon world, on the other hand, a more liberal model founded on the rights of the individual has predominated. More recently, however, challenges by Furet, Gauchet and others to the Marxist historiography of the Revolution, a rediscovery of a French liberal tradition of its own, from Constant and Tocqueville to Aron, and a more general embracing of the new individualist zeitgeist of contemporary capitalism by political and economic commentators have lead to a convergence of tendencies. Hewlett acknowledges some of the advantages of a liberal version of rights, especially when compared to a totalitarian version of the sovereignty of the people and the terror that can be carried out in its name. However, he insists on the limited picture of democracy proposed by the new liberal chattering class. Arguing from a broadly Marxist standpoint and bemoaning the depoliticization of large areas of social and economic life that accompanies the neo-liberal agenda, he suggests that only a renewal of a more direct and participative form of democracy can address the material inequalities of contemporary society. Recent social movements like ATTAC and the defence of the 'sans papiers' provide some hope of a renewal of the participative democracy Hewlett advocates, while the persistence of a powerful republican tradition means that the liberal concept of democracy is still tempered in France by a belief in the public sphere, the social state and the realm of citizenship. Hewlett's general tone, however, is not altogether optimistic. He seems to suggest that, having lost the democratic plot completely with Vichy, France risks losing it again through its new-found infatuation with liberalism. In this scenario, postmodern theory, in the form of structuralism and poststructuralism, is interpreted broadly as an intellectual accompaniment to the process of depoliticization heralded by liberalism. For some, this might seem to be an unfair appraisal of Foucault, Derrida and others, whose theories of the fragmentary and decentred nature of language and ideology could be seen to extend our understanding of power beyond the confines of classical Marxism, rather than appearing to be the intellectual justification of liberalism. But Hewlett makes a strong case for a France which has lost faith in its own particular brand of democracy. Written in a clear and elegant style, this book combines a comprehensive view of political theory with a lucid account of French political history. The French case from modernity to the present is indeed, as Hewlett notes, a fascinating one. He is equal to the task of highlighting its vicissitudes.