The French Revolution: popular sovereignty versus the centralized state
Bosc Yannick
It was thought that during the French Revolution, the implementation of popular sovereignty would go hand in hand with the construction of the “centralized Jacobin state” embodied by Robespierre and inherited by Bonaparte. On the contrary, the implementation of popular sovereignty between 1789 and 1795 was accompanied by a “decentralization” of executive power, a trend that was reinforced in 1793-1794. What historiography calls “Jacobinism” is therefore fundamentally “decentralizing” and not centralizing as we have learned. The construction of the centralized state, which Bonaparte accentuated, began in 1795. This centralization was a reaction to the “anarchy” which, according to the Thermidorians, characterized the revolutionary process, culminating in what they called the “Terror”, of which Robespierre was the embodiment. The main function of the centralized state is to replace popular sovereignty, in other words, to capture most of its prerogatives.
The concept of state, as we understand it today, corresponds to the executive apparatus. In the 18th century, this notion referred to the state of society as opposed to the state of nature. It did not refer to the administrative apparatus in the hands of the executive, nor to the “government” of the social state. In this case, the state refers to “civil society”, an expression that is used today, and in reverse, to characterize what is not the state. It is the organization of this state, in the sense of civil society, based on different conceptions of sovereignty, that is at stake in political struggles.
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