ABSTRACT
The Jacobins were a revolutionary group during the French Revolution of 1789 onwards, and their principal fight was for the creation of a single national parliament, democratically expressing the will of the people and solely symbolizing the sovereignty of the state. Revolutionary leaders, such as Lenin, who have ruled through centrally-imposed decision, as they maintain for the good of the populace, have also been described as Jacobin. Its modern use, especially in French politics, derives from this early concern with central authority, the objection to what was called pouvoirs intermeÂdiaires, the feudal idea of a hierarchy of levels of authority, with legitimate foci of power and citizen-loyalty between the individual and the state. In its modern guise this becomes an insistence that all important decisions be made centrally in a state, and that only the official central government should in any way express sovereignty or be seen as entitled to legitimacy and loyalty. Thus politicians in France who are regarded as Jacobin deny the need for semi-autonomous regional governments, and would also oppose any delegation of decisionmaking power to other national institutions. France is, in fact, notable for its degree of centralization of policy-making, as much on minor as on major issues. Thus decisions as trivial as the renaming of a tiny commune, or as important, but elsewhere non-standardized, as which textbooks should be used in schools, are entirely controlled from Paris. It is interesting that this Jacobin position cuts across ordinary party ideological gulfs. The two most Jacobin parties in recent French orthodox politics have been from the extreme left and right of orthodox politics: the Parti Communiste FrancËais (PCF) and from Gaullism, the Rassemblement pour la ReÂpublique (RPR). Both insisted on the primacy of central government, while the Parti Socialiste and, to much the same extent, the centre-right, were committed to regionalism and decentralization. There is no reason why the label Jacobin should not be used of politicians in other countries, but it has its particular importance in France simply because the Jacobins were so successful for so very long, to the almost total exclusion of real local government even until the late 20th century.
