“A historian and foremost theorist of democracy, Pierre Rosanvallon has produced another very insightful book, this time on the great variety of sources of democratic legitimation, and their evolving importance in contemporary society. This work casts fresh light on today’s liberal democracies, and opens new potential avenues for their renewal. For those concerned about where our politics are heading, this book provides a penetrating historical analysis to make sense of it all, and perhaps also some new reasons to hope.”–Charles Taylor, author of Multiculturalism and A Secular Age

“It is a cause for celebration when one of our most eminent theorists of democracy chooses to illuminate deep and stressful issues with rigor and originality. Probing tensions inherent in the distinction between majorities who decide and a more abstract people said to be sovereign, Pierre Rosanvallon identifies the inescapable contradictions inherent in different bases and forms of legitimacy, brilliantly showing why and how modern democracy is charged, fluid, and unsettled.”–Ira Katznelson, coauthor of Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns

“This is a major work that deserves to have a large impact on current political theory, and its investigation of historical episodes of democratic legitimation make it of obvious interest to U.S. and European historians as well.”–Samuel Moyn, Columbia University

“This is an important and unique work in the theory and history of democratic legitimacy. It is contextually situated but offers general propositions about the conditions, meaning, and institutional forms for democratic legitimacy in the twenty-first century.”–Jean L. Cohen, Columbia University

“A historian and foremost theorist of democracy, Pierre Rosanvallon has produced another very insightful book, this time on the great variety of sources of democratic legitimation, and their evolving importance in contemporary society. This work casts fresh light on today’s liberal democracies, and opens new potential avenues for their renewal. For those concerned about where our politics are heading, this book provides a penetrating historical analysis to make sense of it all, and perhaps also some new reasons to hope.”–Charles Taylor, author of Multiculturalism and A Secular Age

“It is a cause for celebration when one of our most eminent theorists of democracy chooses to illuminate deep and stressful issues with rigor and originality. Probing tensions inherent in the distinction between majorities who decide and a more abstract people said to be sovereign, Pierre Rosanvallon identifies the inescapable contradictions inherent in different bases and forms of legitimacy, brilliantly showing why and how modern democracy is charged, fluid, and unsettled.”–Ira Katznelson, coauthor of Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns

“This is a major work that deserves to have a large impact on current political theory, and its investigation of historical episodes of democratic legitimation make it of obvious interest to U.S. and European historians as well.”–Samuel Moyn, Columbia University

“This is an important and unique work in the theory and history of democratic legitimacy. It is contextually situated but offers general propositions about the conditions, meaning, and institutional forms for democratic legitimacy in the twenty-first century.”–Jean L. Cohen, Columbia University

Pierre Rosanvallon is professor at the College de France and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His many books include “Counter- Democracy, The Demands of Liberty, Democracy Past and Future”, and “The New Social Question” (Princeton).

Democratic Legitimacy

IMPARTIALITY, REFLEXIVITY, PROXIMITYBy Pierre Rosanvallon

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2011 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-14948-6

Contents

Introduction The Decentering of Democracies………………………………..1Part One: Dual Legitimacy…………………………………………………15Chapter One The Legitimacy of Establishment………………………………..17Chapter Two The Legitimacy of Identification with Generality…………………33Chapter Three The Great Transformation…………………………………….60Part Two: The Legitimacy of Impartiality……………………………………73Chapter Four Independent Authorities: History and Problems…………………..75Chapter Five The Democracy of Impartiality…………………………………87Chapter Six Is Impartiality Politics?……………………………………..104Part Three: Reflexive Legitimacy…………………………………………..121Chapter Seven Reflexive Democracy…………………………………………123Chapter Eight The Institutions of Reflexivity………………………………137Chapter Nine On the Importance of Not Being Elected…………………………154Part Four: The Legitimacy of Proximity……………………………………..169Chapter Ten Attention to Particularity…………………………………….171Chapter Eleven The Politics of Presence……………………………………187Chapter Twelve Interactive Democracy………………………………………203Conclusion The Democracy of Appropriation………………………………….219Index…………………………………………………………………..227

Chapter One

The Legitimacy of Establishment

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s contention that “the voice of the greater number always obliges the rest” is a commonplace of today’s electoral politics, yet the assertion masks a crucial assumption: the idea that political legitimacy is not fully achieved until a regime enjoys the unanimous support of its citizens. Only then can a government count itself as securely established on its social foundations. Since democracy implies that each individual is the bearer of fundamental rights, the consent of all is the only incontestable guarantee of respect for each. This “individualistic” understanding of the requirement of unanimity is the fundamental justification of the legal state. Taken together, universal suffrage and a government of laws define the democratic regime.

But the underlying requirement of unanimity is broader than this formulation implies. There is also a more anthropological interpretation of unanimity, in which unanimity symbolizes the organic wholeness of the society. In order to understand fully the significance of electoral legitimation, one has to study the way in which the individualistic legal requirement is embedded in a holistic vision—a vision that treats unanimity as an intrinsic moral, social, and political value.

Democratic regimes eventually adopted the principle of majority rule as a practical procedural necessity, since numerical unanimity was virtually impossible to achieve. Yet at the same time they remained under the sway of this older idea of substantive unanimity. Substantive unanimity is a less reductive concept than numerical unanimity. The numerical notion of “majority” has no anthropological equivalent. Ultimately, this latent contradiction would eventually undermine the idea that legitimacy can spring from elections alone. In order to gauge the extent of the problem, a brief exploration of the old sense of unanimity is warranted.

The Old Understanding of Unanimity

In the ancient world, a united, peaceful society was the political ideal. Greek cities paid homage to Homonoia, the goddess of concord, and Roman subjects erected temples to Concordia throughout the empire. To participate in this harmony was to assert membership of the community and support for its institutions. This sense of belonging was exemplified by the famous Roman formula SPQR, Senatus populusque romanus. This meant that the Senate and people of Rome were one; it implied no mandate or delegation of authority. If “representation” of any kind existed, it was simply in the sense of an assumed identification. But the citizen could participate only in a whole, a totality.

No political device for the expression of division was sanctioned. That is why popular acclamation played such a central role. In Rome, popular acclamation symbolized the consensus ideal, and not only cities but the empire as a whole were supposed to be governed by it. At the municipal level, it was fairly common for acclamations to accompany the voting on public proclamations in honor of euergetes (benefactors) and other notables. In this ancient political economy, gratitude and honor—symbolic goods signified by shouts of acclamation—were exchanged for material gifts. In this context, approval (and, more rarely, disapproval) could only be global, never partial. Popular approbation merely sealed a bargain whose terms, though instinctively recognized, were never explicitly spelled out. Political sociologists today refer to such a situation as one of “apparent consensus.” The function of “voting,” if we can call it that, was not to decide anything or to initiate a new round of policymaking. It simply affirmed the status quo and proved that the city was functioning as it should.

Similar “rituals of unanimity” existed elsewhere, in Germania and Gaul, for example. Both Caesar and Tacitus were deeply struck by them and often referred to such rituals in The Gallic Wars and Germania. Both described how assemblies of armed men raised their lances to express approval of their leaders’ words, or else murmured disapproval of statements they disliked. Consent was again collective, with no notion of vote-counting. Popular assemblies were merely a way of testing and reaffirming the cohesion of the group and of celebrating the fusion of group and leader. (The various Germanic terms for “king” derive from kin, “people,” which is also the word for “tribe.”) The idea of unity was reinforced by the religious world view into which it was incorporated. Supernatural qualities were attributed to the tribal chieftain, thereby tying the community to its gods. Warrior assemblies thus had a sacred dimension, which was indistinguishable from their “political” dimension. Priests therefore played an essential role. They initiated deliberations and, as the guardians of tribal peace, exerted a powerful influence on the group. When unanimity was disrupted by overt dissidence, this was immediately seen as a bad omen, a threat to the social order to be stifled as rapidly as possible.

The Church in the first few centuries of Christianity embraced this ancient culture of participation culminating in unanimity. The first Christian communities sought to copy what they took to be positive ideals, which remained in an embryonic state in the municipal culture of the period. They hoped that unanimous approbation would demonstrate respect for their Trinitarian God. The Church therefore assigned an important role in managing its affairs to the assembly of the faithful. Isolated, highly egalitarian Christian communities spontaneously organized themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. Christianity thus fostered a vocabulary of deliberation and participation, to which it attached positive value. Indeed, it was in Christian communities that the term universal suffrage was first used to denote communal accord. Early Christians also used the word unanimitas to denote the true communion to which they aspired.

In the first century after Christ, the apostles relied on elections to fill various posts in Christian communities. With the passing of the first generation of apostles, whose ascendancy over the faithful was in a sense natural and uncontested, the election of bishops spread widely. Later, the principle was solemnly reaffirmed. At the beginning of the fifth century, for example, Pope Celestine I promulgated the rule that “no person may serve as bishop without having been accepted by the Christian people.” His successors regularly repeated the formula.

There should be no mistake about the meaning of electio in this context, however. There were neither candidates, ballots, ballot boxes, nor vote counts. Elections took place plebe praesente, that is, in the presence of the people, with their acquiescence or approval. An election was a ritual of communion. It expressed the confidence of the community in the person who was to lead it, but no precise rules governed the electoral procedure. Surviving accounts of such elections emphasize the group’s state of mind and suggest that the community was present merely to confirm a choice that originated in a smaller group, composed solely of clergy, and that the sense of the community had been canvassed previously. The assembled group expressed its approval by acclamation, with words such as “Fiat, fiat, dignum et justum est.” The goal was mainly to demonstrate the perfect unity of the community. We do not know whether there was any way to say no or abstain.

We find the same totalizing concept of the body politic in Italy at the dawn of the twelfth century, when the first towns were being organized. The leadership group included all the free men of the town, who gathered in an assembly that was unlike any electoral body we might imagine today. The definition of the common good did not allow for differing points of view; a moral and social consensus was taken for granted. Voices within the community did not all carry the same weight: occupation and neighborhood defined a hierarchy.

In this context, the modern idea of voting would have made no sense. Acclamation remained the natural way of expressing the communal sentiment. Until the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the terms laudatio or collaudatio—words suggesting homage as well as collective voice—were used to denote the expression of popular consent. When town statutes alluded to popular approbation, they generally omitted any mention of procedures of deliberation and choice.

Indeed, the term election did not denote methodical counting of individual choices; one spoke, rather, of electio ad vistam or electio ad vocem. 10 The first elections in which votes were actually counted took place within small ruling councils: when a town council weighed a decision, for instance. In such a setting, the need to count votes was not a sign of social division; it was merely a way of eliminating uncertainty. In these early towns, no one ever thought of counting votes to select leaders. Indeed, aldermen were often chosen by lot so as to avoid inflaming the passions of rival groups. Lotteries were a substitute for unanimity; the idea of the body politic remained holistic. Individual equality was not recognized: lotteries were simply a device for exorcising discord.

In each of the instances discussed above, unanimity should not be interpreted in numerical terms. It was not the result of counting votes. It was understood, rather, as a social quality. Unanimity defined the state of a collectivity or the nature of its constitution, its enduring unity. Yet it was here that popular participation in government began. Political participation did not initially mean taking sides, expressing an opinion, or indicating a preference for a particular clan or faction. Indeed, the civic ideal of inclusion and participation was initially affirmed in opposition to what we would today characterize as a pluralistic-individualistic understanding of political activity.

The Equivocal Invention of the Majority

The notion of “majority” made no sense in a culture of unanimity without procedures for measuring consent. Such a culture never had to face the problem of numerically divided opinion. The need to confront this problem first arose in groups smaller than the community at large. These were primarily religious communities, groups characterized by their small size and homogeneity.

An assembly of monks or nuns bore little resemblance to a mass gathering of the population in a cemetery or outside a church. In a religious community, each person occupied a definite place in a well-defined group. Deliberation could be organized in a structured way, and precise rules could easily be applied to the manner in which a decision was reached. Monasteries adopted the principle of election quite early—a reflection of monastic ideals of equality and fraternity.

In a closed group, however, daily contact gives rise to powerful affects. The abbot is not a remote leader but an intimate presence, whose temperament affects each monk directly. In monastery elections, dissident or even merely doubtful voices could therefore fairly naturally make themselves heard. Minority factions did in fact form in these communities, sometimes as informal groups. How were they acknowledged and treated? The question is important enough to warrant a brief digression.

At first, differences of judgment were treated as mere fleeting expressions of sentiment. Temporary lapses of unanimity could be corrected rapidly, as long as the minority rallied to the position of the majority. The minutes of monastery meetings barely mention the brief moments of discord: the ultimate agreement was entered into the record as unanimous.

Before long, however, the stakes grew to the point where minority positions hardened, and minorities organized as relatively coherent factions, or even “parties.” The Church sought to work around this difficulty, whose nature was philosophical as well as practical, by proposing to distinguish between electors on the basis of quality as well as quantity.

To cope with failure to achieve numerical unity, the notion of the sanior pars was proposed: the term designated the wiser members of the group. The notion of unity was redefined accordingly. For a time, the terms sanior pars and major pars were used interchangeably. This attempt to apply different weights to the opinions of different segments of the community was doomed to failure, however, because no simple criterion for determining the sanior pars emerged.

To put an end to interminable disputes over the definition of the sanior pars, the Church ultimately recognized the majority principle as a technical device. Dominican constitutions adopted majority rule in 1221. The Carthusians and Benedictines followed suit. More egalitarian orders such as the Franciscans found the principle attractive on doctrinal grounds. For them, it was a logical consequence of their radically egalitarian worldview.

The procedures for the election of popes underwent a similar evolution. At first, the rule that the Sacred College must reach a unanimous decision was taken for granted as a spiritual necessity: the head of the Church had to reflect its unity. In reality, however, things were not that simple. Many conflicts went unresolved, and disagreement at times led to schism. From the inception of the Church until 1122, 159 popes had served as its head, but during the same period, 31 “antipopes” had been recognized by dissident factions.

The problem had grown worse over time. From the middle of the ninth until the middle of the tenth century, twelve of twenty-six elected popes had been relieved of their duties, five had been sent into exile, and five others had been assassinated. Before the twelfth century, all popes were by law unanimously elected. This led, however, to numerous schisms, since minorities had no choice but to leave the Church or resort to covert internal opposition. In reaction to this, the Lateran Council decided in 1179 that a qualified majority of two-thirds would suffice to elect a pope. This lessened the bitterness of dissidents. A short while later, the idea of bringing all electors together for a “conclave” helped to promote a spirit of compromise.

Here, too, the acceptance of the majority principle was merely a tactical maneuver. In no way did it imply the embrace of a pluralistic perspective, of the idea that differences of opinion are natural and productive—an idea that remained unthinkable in the religious context. The only real causes of disunity, people believed at the time, were intrigue and incomprehension. Unanimity remained the philosophical ideal of Christian communities.

Contrary to a widely held idea, the Church was not a laboratory for democratic experimentation. Election by majority vote in this limited context had no repercussions on the political order. Rousseau discussed the role of the ephors and tribunes of Antiquity at length, delved into the problems raised by the use of the liberum veto in the Polish Diet, and analyzed the institutions of certain Swiss cantons in detail, but he said not a word about ecclesiastical practices. At the time of the American or French revolutions there was no discussion of them; indeed, few people had any idea what they were.

In the late eighteenth century, the old ideal of unanimity still loomed large. If John Locke and Rousseau accepted majority voting, they never for a moment suggested that a well-ordered political system could be based on confrontation between a majority and a minority. On this point they were closer to the ancients and the political theologians of the Middle Ages than to modern theorists of pluralist democracy.

The advent of the right to vote established the majoritarian principle as a pragmatic expedient, yet the old ideal of unanimity persisted nevertheless. We see this in the terms in which Sieyès, the father of the French Constitution, laid out the issue in 1789. The author of Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? (What Is the Third Estate?) no longer saw society as community. His concept of society was rooted in egalitarian individualism, and he explicitly defined the general will as the sum of all individual wills.

This led him to posit unanimity as a formal ideal while thinking of it in numerical terms. If individuals are free and equal by nature, none should be in a position to dominate others, and legitimate power can arise only from the unity of individual wills. But how are we to think of such “mechanical unanimity,” in contrast to the old primordial unanimity? Sieyès resolved the problem by recourse to a fiction: the majority was said to be an equivalent of unanimity.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from Democratic Legitimacyby Pierre Rosanvallon Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.