Pierre Rosanvallon - Democracy Past and Future

Columbia Studies in
Political Thought /
Political History
Dick Howard, General Editor

Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History Dick Howard, General Editor

Columbia Studies in Political Thought / Political History is a series dedicated to exploring the possibilities for democratic initiative and the revitalization of politics in the wake of the exhaustion of twentieth-century ideological isms. By taking a historical approach to the politics of ideas about power, governance, and the just societyand by interpreting historical and contemporary eventsthis series seeks to foster and illuminate new political spaces for human action and choice.

PIERRE ROSANVALLON

Democracy

Past

and

Future

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-51044-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosanvallon, Pierre, 1948

Democracy past and future / Pierre Rosanvallon; edited by Samuel Moyn.

p. cm.

A collection of essays from different works including the authors inaugural lecture at the Collge de France.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0231137400 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Democracy. 2. Liberalism. 3. Civil society. I. Moyn, Samuel. II. Title.

JC423.R6169 2006

321.8dc22

2005051944

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Contents

was originally published as Leon inaugurale faite jeudi le 21 mars 2002 (Paris, 2002), and reprinted as Pour une histoire conceptuelle du politique (Paris, 2003). ditions du Seuil, reprinted by permission.

was originally published as Towards a Philosophical History of the Political, in Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk, eds., The History of Political Thought in National Context (Cambridge, 2002), after a manuscript original and in a translation substantially revised here. Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission.

was originally published as Le peuple introuvable: Histoire de la reprsentation dmocratique en France (Paris, 1998, 2000), 3555, along with a section on the Terror from La dmocratie inacheve: Histoire de la souverainet du peuple en France (Paris, 2000, 2003), 8489. Gallimard, reprinted by permission.

was originally published in this form as La rpublique du suffrage universel, in Franois Furet et Mona Ozouf, eds., Le Sicle de lavnement rpublicain (Paris, 1993), translated by Laura Mason as The Republic of Universal Suffrage, in Biancamaria Fontana, ed., The Invention of Modern Republic (Cambridge, 1994), 192205. Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission. It also essentially coincides with Rosanvallon, Le sacre du citoyen: Histoire du suffrage universel en France (Paris, 1992, 2001), 34247, 36466, 37287.

was originally published as the editorial matter to Franois Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, ed. Rosanvallon (Paris, 1985). Different parts of the editorial matterone section of it, entitled Prface: Le Gramsci de la bourgeoisie, introduced the book, while another presented a previously unpublished essay by Guizot on sovereigntyhave been combined and interwoven in this selection.

was originally published as Rationalisme politique et dmocratie en France (XVIIIeXIXe sicles), Zinbun, Annals of the Institute of Research in Humanities 29 (1994): 1732, translated anonymously into English as Political Rationalism and Democracy in France in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Philosophy and Social Criticism 28, 6 (November 2002): 687702, heavily revised here. Sage Publications, reprinted by permission.

was originally published as Culture politique librale et rformisme, Esprit 251 (March 1999): 16170, and is reprinted by permission of the journal. The text also appeared under the title Le march et les trois utopies librales as the preface to the new edition of Pierre Rosanvallon, Le capitalisme utopique: Histoire de lide de march (Paris, 1999).

was originally published as Marx et la socit civile, Commentaire 4 (Winter 197879): 46877, reprinted as Rosanvallon, Le capitalisme utopique: Critique de lidologie conomique (Paris, 1979), chap. 9, Marx et le retournement du libralisme. ditions du Seuil, reprinted by permission. This book has since been republished, most recently as Le capitalisme utopique: Histoire de lide de march (Paris, 1999).

was originally published as La dmocratie inacheve: Histoire de la souverainet du peuple en France (Paris, 2000, 2003), 41350 (the last section of chap. 11 and all of the conclusion). Gallimard, reprinted by permission.

was originally published as Le dficit dmocratique europen, Esprit 288 (October 2002): 87100, from remarks originally delivered in 2001 at the Cini Foundation in Venice, and is reprinted by permission of the journal. The text conserves the lecture format; the translation is based, if distantly, on Karsten Sand Iversens earlier English-language rendering.

The Postscript is an original text.

Democracy and Disarray

It was not long after democracy triumphed as a regime, in the postcold war era, that the theory and practice of democracy fell into disarray. In the United States, as in the rest of the world, democracy has never been more prestigious, among intellectuals and policymakers, even as its practical implications for foreign policy have become disquieting and its institutional content at home has undergone massive shifts. The unanimityleft, right, and centerabout the value and importance of democracy is remarkable, to be sure. But it occurs at the same time that it is hollowed out or even perverted, madeas many thinkinto a cunning apology for imperial advancement. Yet the disarray that garners most attention and inspires most debate in the field of foreign policy is far more general, and it is above all internal and theoretical.

The situation is especially serious for the left, liberal and progressive, on the defensive and out of power in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. But the loss of practical energy, which might have prompted theoretical introspection, has instead led to the embrace of superannuated approaches. For the moment, the effect of September 11, one confirmed rather than unsettled by the more recent electoral victory of conservative politicians, has been a revival of an old ideological couple. An antiterroristic or antitotalitarian liberalism has become the favored approach of many political elites in Western democracies, and in America not least, while hostility to liberalism in the name of radical democracy wins more and more converts everyday in the ranks of intellectuals and activists.

Among the numerous connections between the antitotalitarian liberalism and the dominant, populist alternative to it that present themselves today, one is their shared source in the practical and intellectual experience of a particular nation: France. The antitotalitarian perspective, of course, resonates in obvious ways with the historical anticommunism of a certain strand of American liberalism. But in the form in which it has recently been renovated for the postSeptember 11 world, most prominently but far from exclusively in Paul Bermans war pamphlet