ABSTRACT
Power flowed from the sovereign people, but how was it to be exercised? In the city states of ancient Greece, the people m et in the agora to exercise their civic rights, but 28,000,000 French m en could hardly fit into the Champ de Mars. (It could be m anaged today with television and the Internet.) The solution found by most populous democracies has been representative government. However, Rousseau had said that sovereignty could not be represented. Thus, he argued, the British were free only once every five years (at the time of parliam entary elections). Rousseau was followed by radical French politicians, notably by the enrages, who flourished in the summer of 1793. They argued that parliamentary deputies did not represent the French people but merely had a revocable m andate from them. Such a system is sometimes called ‘direct democracy’. In token of this prin ciple, the primary assemblies (sections, of which there were 48 in Paris) did not dissolve once they had perform ed their electoral duty but rem ained in being to chivy their ‘m andatories’ and assumed administrative tasks. So also did the body they elected to choose the deputies directly, the electoral college. Main stream politicians, even Jacobins, did not accept this doctrine, bu t the Jacobin constitution of 1793 (never im plem ented) paid lip-service to it by providing for referenda on every legislative act if dem anded by the people through their primary (electoral) assemblies.
