Can Popular Sovereignty Be Represented? Jacobinism from Radical Democracy to Populism

Contemporary studies mostly understand populism as a reaction to the failures of representative liberal democracies. Yet populism existed at the very inception of modern democracy before it became liberal. I contend that, during the French Revolution, conflicting claims of popular sovereignty gave rise to populism, which was instantiated in the Jacobin theory of Robespierre. The rapid transformation of Jacobinism in the years of the attempted birth of modern democracy (1789–94) tracks the theoretical question at the heart of populism: How can sovereignty be represented for a divided people that have yet to be united in order to exist?.

Duke Scholars

Author Genevieve Rousseliere Political Science