ABSTRACT
‘Caesarism’ plays a particular role in nineteenth-century history, not only because the concept epitomises attempts to conceive a genuinely new experience of post-revolutionary governance situated somewhere between democracy and dictatorship, but also because it reflects the attempt to comprehend the (modern) present by relating it to the (ancient) past. It harks back to the regimes of the Roman emperors following the crisis of the late Republic and especially the person of Julius Caesar, but also evinces an intrinsic novelty because the term was only coined in the nineteenth century. With Caesarism assuming the guiding conceptual role, this chapter aims to analyse the extent to which democracy emerged as (in-)compatible with dictatorship in political thought and practice during the revolutionary period and its aftermath. Caesarism will neither be understood as a rigidly fixed category, nor as a form of government characterised by unambiguous features; rather, it will be shown to be a flexible political category describing certain visions of political rule positioned amidst the conflicting priorities of ‘political mass participation’ and ‘effective rule’, especially in times of real or perceived crisis, and as such a natural concomitant of modern politics.
