Rousseauian Sovereignty: The Willingness of All

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This article disputes Keith Sutherland's claim that a sovereign minipublic constituted by random sampling would satisfy Rousseau's conception of popular sovereignty. On my interpretation, Rousseau's volonté générale is a regularly verified 'general willingness' in which every association-member must be allowed a voice, rather than a metaphysically ambiguous 'general will', inferred from putatively objective interests, that may be hypothesized by others. Using an analogy with equal marriage to illuminate Rousseau's vision and the historical examples of classical Athens, Rome, and the Brexit referendum to illustrate both its feasibility and its challenges, I argue from numerous passages in the Social Contract (1762) that it was an essential criterion of Rousseau's ideal political association that no member would want any other member to be subjected unwillingly to the terms of their common association. Accordingly, there needed to be regular, low-stakes opportunities for every member to signal publicly their personal willingness (or unwillingness) to maintain the association on current or proposed terms, knowing (a) what those terms consisted in substantively, (b) that the position of a majority of voters would be decisive, and (c) that if any members found themselves unable willingly to accept the result of the vote, then proceeding with it would be illegitimate. On the same reasoning, whenever association members are denied an equal share in deciding the terms of their common association — as when those decisions are made by an authorized representative mini-public — then no one can be sure that the excluded members are genuinely willing to maintain the association on the stated terms, thereby making the association illegitimate. A randomly sampled mini-public might have made an acceptable government, on Rousseau's definition (i.e.a body that makes decisions on particular matters rather than on general norms), but never an acceptable sovereign.