Abstract
It is said that the people are sovereign; but over whom? – over themselves, apparently. The people are thus subject. There is surely something equivocal if not erroneous here, for the people which command are not the people which obey. It is enough, then, to put the general proposition, ‘The people are sovereign’, to feel that it needs an exegesis…. The people, it will be said, exercise their sovereignty by means of their representatives. This begins to make sense. The people are the sovereign which cannot exercise sovereignty… (Joseph De Maistre, Study on Sovereignty) Someone was speaking to Sieyès of the scorn that his detractors continually affect for what they call ‘grand theories’. ‘Theories’, he said, ‘are the practice of centuries; all their practices are the theory of the passing moment! (Pierre Louis Roederer)1
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