Abstract
The word ‘democracy’ literally means rule by the people. It is a compound noun derived from the Greek words demos (the people) and kratein (to rule). The starting point for any discussion about democracy is therefore to circumscribe ‘the people’. Rule by the people – including all citizens – started with the French ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’ in 1789, which brought democracy exclusively to French citizens. The notion of democracy is inseparable from territorial demarcations defining who constitutes the people, that is, the demos , which represents the pouvoir constituant of the constitution, and indeed the democratic system, since all laws are seen as the embodiment of the general will of the French people. Of course, in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s original formulation what made law supreme was the fact that the people directly voted for it. In such a clear expression of the general will of the people, popular rule was deemed infallible, and thus the source of all legitimate authority. The French ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’ expanded the notion of general will of the people to the institutions of representative democracy, thereby turning the Parliament into the embodiment of the general will of the people. Abbé Sieyès’ formulation above captures the revolutionary spirit of those times.
Tout les pouvoirs publics sans distinction sont une émanation de la volonté générale; tous viennent du peuple, c’est-à-dire, de la Nation ces deux termes doivent être synonimes [sic.].
Abbé Sieyès (1789, p. 32)
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© 2012 Raffaele Iacovino and Jan Erk
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Iacovino, R., Erk, J. (2012). The Constitutional Foundations of Multination Federalism: Canada and Belgium. In: Seymour, M., Gagnon, AG. (eds) Multinational Federalism. The Comparative Territorial Politics series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016744_10
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