Rousseau's Democratic Principle

Notes and Discussions ROUSSEAU'S DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE Those who think of Rousseau's democratic principle in terms of the citizen who is both subject and sovereign, sovereignty of the people, law as the will of the people and being obedient to laws one prescribes to oneself have got it wrong. Recently Robert Dahl has argued' that although Rousseau says such things, Rousseau also holds that the great bulk of the people are excluded from government and legislation. (Dahl, p. i 14) Dahl repeats the error of Grotius (Contract, Book 1, Chapter Two): "His most persistent mode of reasoning is always to establish right by fact." In this brief note I will refute Dahl's contention that Rousseau is guilty of a major contradiction. If one were to try to express Rousseau's theory of democracy in a few, non-technical words then the job might best be done by the following: "responsible adults subject to the laws, ought to be their author." Yet in his essay, Dahl says that Rousseau "makes it clear" (114) that Rousseau did not mean this at all. Rather, according to Dahl, Rousseau meant that decision making should be confined to only a small minority of the adult population. Moreover, Dahl finds the evidence for his conclusion, not in some little known fragment of Rousseau's corpus, but in The Social Contract, the very work in which Rousseau's democratic principle occurs originally. As has been noted, Dahl claims to prove that Rousseau holds that not all responsible adults ought to be authors of law. What, then, is Dahl's evidence for this conclusion? The passages to which he refers for support occur in Chapter Three of Book Four entitled "Of Elections." Let me say first what the evidence seems to say and next consider the construction Dahl puts upon it. Rousseau's first paragraph indicates pretty well what the chapter is about. With regard to elections of the prince and of magistrates which are, as I have said, complex acts, there are two ways of proceeding; namely, by choice and lot. Both have been employed in various republics.... 'Robert A. Dahl., "Procedural Democracy,"Philosophy,Politicsand Society,Fifth Series, edited by Peter Laslett and James Fishkin, Blackwell, 1979, pp. 97-133. [2311 232 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY That is to say, the general objective of the chapter is to describe and discuss alternative methods of electing officials in different forms of" government, viz., monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. The sixth paragraph, from which Dahl takes most of his material, aims at showing that Venice is a mixed form of government rather than a pure aristocracy. In the course of discussing this opinion, Rousseau holds that judging by the classes of citizens that constitute the states of Venice and Geneva, and by which proportion of the citizens qualifies under existing law as voters, then Geneva is as much an aristocracy as Venice. Doubtless, the comment reflects Rousseau's difficult relationships with both Venice and Geneva, but prima facie it bears on the desired conclusion that Venice is a mixed form of government and is not truly aristocratic. To reach his conclusion, Dahl puts a different construction on what Rousseau seems to be saying. The gist of Dahl's argument, almost entirely in his own words, appears to be as follows. Occasionally Rousseau appears to be asserting that all adult members are citizens by categorical right. But Rousseau makes it clear the he means no such thing. Thus he lauds Geneva, even though its demos ~ consisted of only a small minority of the population. Rousseau then goes on to show that Venice and Geneva are truly alike (114). One might conclude that neither republic could be legitimate in Rousseau's eyes. But this was not his conclusion, nor did he even hint at such an inference (1 i5). Rousseau regarded Geneva and Venice as true republics, governed "by the people," even though in both cities the demos constituted a minority of the adults: in Venice about one-tenth of one per cent of the population! (119) With these words Dahl believes he proves that Rousseau contradicts himsell " and denies the categorical right of citizens which, according to Rousseau, is to...