Public opinion and popular sovereignty

Arthur Ghins has published a book that revisits the emergence of democracy during the French Revolution and analyzes how French liberalism was formed in response to it.

By focusing on two concepts often studied separately-public opinion and popular sovereignty-Arthur Ghins’ "The People’s Two Powers" uncovers a major historical shift in our understanding of democracy. Initially associated by Rousseau, Condorcet, Robespierre and Bonapartist theorists with the direct exercise of popular sovereignty, democracy was first rejected by liberals, then redefined by them during the 19th century as government by public opinion. This redefinition led to the invention of the term "liberal democracy" in France in the 1860s. Originally conceived in opposition to "Caesarism" under the Second Empire, the idea of liberal democracy was then redeployed by French liberals against new adversaries - "totalitarianism" from the 1930s, and "populism" since the 1980s.

A book with multiple contributions:

By studying public opinion and popular sovereignty together, the book highlights a hitherto neglected distinction between these two forms of power, and on this basis proposes a renewed interpretation of the emergence of democracy and liberalism in France.

The book offers the first systematic study of the emergence of the concept of "liberal democracy" and its subsequent development. While the histories of liberalism and democratic thought have been the subject of many works, the context in which the term itself was forged has received little attention. This book fills that gap.

Its dual focus on public opinion and popular sovereignty enables new readings of important figures such as Rousseau, Condorcet, Robespierre, Benjamin Constant, Tocqueville, Raymond Aron and Claude Lefort. The book resituates these authors in their historical contexts, and places them in dialogue with neglected or forgotten authors.

Unlike many conceptual histories of democracy, the book shows how the invention of the idea of "liberal democracy" went hand in hand with the construction of a canon of founding figures, (Constant and Tocqueville), as well as with the demonization of Rousseau as the founding father of Caesarism. By integrating this dimension, the book shows how the conceptualization of democracy has historically been inseparable from practices of rereading and canonizing earlier authors.

The book will appear in one of the leading collections in the history of political thought (Ideas in Context).

Arthur Ghins, The People’s Two Powers: Public Opinion and Popular Sovereignty from Rousseau to Liberal Democracy.
ambridge University Press, "Ideas in Context" Series. March 2026.