Elections

All the same, the election is not challenged in all its aspects by conservative criticism. It can enlighten the holders of sovereignty about the intensity of feeling, the configuration of interests, in brief about the opinions of their subjects. Thus it constitutes a lifelike survey of opinion. When the king of France convokes the Estates General, he invites his good people to name representatives, but also to express their grievances. The electoral base of consultation is very large, since in the parishes nearly everybody votes. But the Estates are no more than a consultative assembly in the mind of the king. It is the forcible coup of Mirabeau and of the Third Estate which made of an assembly a deliberative and constituent power. On the other hand, when the election concerns the ‘intermediary bodies’ (corporative,

professional, municipal, or regional assemblies) it does not arouse any objection from the conservatives. The monarchy of the Ancien Regime left the towns, the trades, the orders, and the estates to organize themselves in elected bodies. The election of their governors appeared as a privilege which guaranteed the autonomy of these bodies-their capacity to govern and administrate themselves by themselves. Finally, suffrage appeared less as a right than as a responsibility attached to a competence or to a status, as, for example, that of head of a family, a category of which, in the case of the Third Estate’s members, the right of suffrage was often limited. Suffrage appeared as an appropriate means of consultation, and also of decision-making, when it concerned the government of societies or of non-political bodies-on condition of not constituting an arm of war against the legitimate holders of the sovereignty. The enumeration of opinions, the division of the assembly into a majority and a minority thus become common and legitimate procedures, even more so because they are very commonly employed in religious orders.