Silencing the laws to save the fatherland
Rousseau’s theory of dictatorship between Bodin and Schmitt
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11345340 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marc De Wilde (0000-0002-7135-2367, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1107-1124 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-17 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of European Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01916599.2019.1661265 |
| OpenAlex | W2971474198 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 8 |
Jean-Jacques Rousseau devoted an important chapter of his Social Contract to the dictatorship. Carl Schmitt interpreted Rousseau’s chapter as marking the transition from ‘commissarial’ to ‘sovereign dictatorship’. This article argues that Schmitt’s interpretation is historically and conceptually inaccurate. Instead of paving the way for sovereign dictatorship, Rousseau carefully distinguished the dictatorship from the people’s sovereign authority. Taking position in the ‘debate’ between Bodin and Grotius on the relation between dictatorship and sovereignty, he argued that the dictator could provisionally suspend the people’s sovereign authority, but not abolish it. More particularly, the dictator did not possess the power to make generally binding laws, which had to remain the exclusive authority of the popular assembly. However, this did not prevent Rousseau from recognizing the dictatorship as a means for democratic reform. Rousseau thus conceived of the dictatorship as a time-limited and revocable commission to protect the constitution and to provide for a more stable and effective state organization based on the principle of popular sovereignty
Constitution · Constitutionality · Democracy · Dictator · Dictatorship · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
| Citations per year | 0.8 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2023 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |