1 – When, in circumstances of time and place, the rule of law and democracy form an alliance to give birth to a political regime inspired by liberal democracy, a particular alchemy begins to the governance of peoples. Many elements, as essential as they are unlikely, must be brought together. So many mechanisms born of the spontaneity of scattered actors need to be coordinated in order to give rise to the miracle of the emergence of the police society, which is always uncertain and is constantly liable to be called into question. It is not enough, in fact, that the laws, and in the first place, the Constitution, Supreme Law, enact the rules by which the institutions they create find their consistency and their legal and political roles. It is not enough that the mechanisms are in place to bring them to life spontaneously. It is also necessary that a collective dynamic, shared by all the individuals forming the community, infuse life and movement into what would otherwise be but an inert mechanism.
Democracy between alchemy, consciousness and evolution.
2 – Unlikely in their individual and intrinsic existences, even more uncertain in their reunion, all these elements nevertheless make system for the good of all and of each one. Of course, nothing is ever totally perfect and the most experienced democracies from time to time experience dysfunctions, sometimes disturbing, which remind us that in a democracy, nothing is ever definitively acquired. Here, it will be the mode of election that does not give victory to the greatest number, there, it will be populism and the disturbing expression of extremism that the integrative function of democracy cannot overcome.
3 – And yet, despite the ups and downs, democracy is gaining ground despite everything. It gains quantitatively by rallying to its principle an increasing number of peoples and countries. It gains qualitatively by perfecting the mechanisms that contribute to its regular expression.
4 – The unlikely adventure and the centuries-old history begin in Greece, in Athens, when CLISTHENES puts an end to a period of tyranny and then of unrest and aristocratic hegemony by establishing the constitutive principles of democratic reform, principles approved by the Ecklesia. We are in 508 BC, and for the first time, the People are entering into political history. In -457, PÉRICLES improves the system by establishing a compensation for the benefit of citizens for the assumption of most public tasks. Democracy was born. PLATO and ARISTOTLE will be the most influential thinkers of this period, although they are neither of the singers of democracy.
5 – Enjoying an aura much less important than Athens, Rome nevertheless brings to humanity the idea of a Republic, a set of balanced institutions that deny the concept of direct democracy and whose existence is based on the right and respect for individual freedom. CICERO (106 – 43 BC) will bring his multifaceted genius to the Republic and to the world by reaching out, through the centuries, to the thinkers of the modern era who will engender humanism.
6 – Athens and Rome have been the matrices of political conceptions which are now 2500 years old.
7 – Since then, the Constitution has provided, in various ways and with a concern for precision, for the organs of the State and its institutional divisions, their functions, their method of designation and the organization of their relations. According to the precepts of LOCKE and MONTESQUIEU, the executive, legislative and judicial functions are distributed among specific bodies whose relations are precisely organized so that, “by the disposition of things, the power stops the power.” Then contemporary democracy will have taken hold.
8 – Because in a democracy we are talking about the participation of the greatest number in decisions concerning the government of the city, citizens find, in the Constitution, the main principles that define their more or less regular and scheduled interventions.
9 – But modern democracy, often organized within large demographic groups, cannot be satisfied with the individual participation of citizens. Political parties are there to share the organized representation of the population according to the great philosophical families that structure the main political opinions. They frame the masses, organize the democratic debate, present candidates to the elections, candidates charged with defending their political options. Citizens express political choices by electing the candidates who make these choices and to whom they entrust mandates of representation and decision concerning the management of the public thing: political mandates. Thus, the notion of political mandate takes its place in the political organization of the city by being, historically and conceptually, at the confluence of five founding concepts of contemporary political life: Democracy, Citizenship, Republic, Sovereignty and Representation.
The five founding concepts.
10 – Thus, in the long history of the political organization of the peoples who have considered, at such and such a moment of their social development, that taking into account the views of as many as possible is a guarantee of the tranquility of living together, these five concepts of legal philosophy hold, individually and in the relationships between them, a particular importance in relation to the concept of political mandate and its duration.
11 – Democracy comes first in logic and in time. It is it which imposes the fundamental idea that the opinions of the members of the community must be taken into account in the decisions concerning the city and for the choice of individuals to whom, for a time, certain powers will be devolved.
12 – Democracy is a political system according to which sovereignty belongs to the people, that is to say to all citizens, and according to a second definition, a political system in which power is exercised by all citizens.
13 – The French term finds its roots in the Greek words «demos», the people and «kratos», power, authority. It seems to have been used for the first time in the French linguistic universe by ORESME ( in the second half of the 14th century.
14 – We are talking about authoritarian, direct, liberal, parliamentary or representative democracy.
15 – The Dictionary of the Academy, in its ninth edition proposes: “A system of political organization in which sovereignty and the resulting decisions are exercised, theoretically or actually, directly or indirectly, by the People, that is, by all citizens.” Democracy thus places the origin of power in the will of citizens and subjects its exercise to their majority vote.
16 – It is commonly accepted that ancient Greece was the cradle of democracy. However, what is the relationship between the Greek Democracy of the 5th century before our era and contemporary practice? To direct democracy, which concerned, in fact, a minority of men in demographically restricted cities, succeeded representative democracy in nations with tens, even several hundred million citizens. The immediate participation of citizens without special qualifications has been replaced by the representation of a political class which is increasingly seeking to become more autonomous in relation to civil society. The professionalized political sphere took the place of an assembly, the ecclesia, which brought together all citizens. The Ancients practised democracy individually, taking into account the personal aura of each of the protagonists known to all. Today, political parties are developing very important logistics and means of communication to publicize programs and candidates in political marketing campaigns with nothing to envy to the promotion of articles of consumption. One will note, in passing, the contradiction of the process of development of the democratic ideal: the more individualism blossoms in civilization, the more secondary political structures, among which the political parties, affirm their importance in the operation of democratic mechanisms.
17 – Then, of course, the political elites measure the weariness of the citizen in the face of the political spectacle whose agitation, sometimes very superficial, seems far from the daily concerns of the population. We are talking about a crisis in representation. Thus came the fashion of so-called participatory democracy… Should we forget that the notion of participation is embedded in the very idea of democracy in which sovereignty belongs to the people? There can be no democracy without the participation of citizens, even if only by the act of election, a basic but essential civic procedure.
18 – No doubt, the increasing complexity of public affairs calls for greater personal and intellectual investment today than in the past, but the future of democracy is-Should it seek to set the people apart at the very moment when individualism, the loosening of social ties, jeopardizes the very existence of society?
19 – When Daniel GAXIE presents democracy, he emphasizes both the continuum that the development of the democratic ideal has known and the fractures that the concept had to endure during a 2,000-year history. By applying first to small cities in which, moreover, democratic participation was reserved to a male political elite, democracy could be limited to relatively simple procedures and direct democracy could be the appropriate framework for political organisation. Applied to political entities of several tens of millions of individuals forming complex societies in which the specialization of social work is increasingly marked, democracy not only changes dimension, it must renew its entire body of organizational principles and methods of expression.
20 – Citizenship then comes which confers on the individual members of the community the necessary quality for participation in the collective decision-making that binds the common destiny. The individual is no longer subject to a system in which his sole function is to obey. He is a member of a collective that takes care of himself as a body and his opinion is required in a more or less regular way.
21 – Lexicological analysis invites us to move from the concept of citizenship to that of citizen and then to that of city, thus making us go back in time and history.
Citizenship.
22 – It was only in 1783, under the pen of BEAUMARCHAIS, in the Courrier de l’Europe, that the word citizenship appeared. The sober definition given by Treasor8 – Citizenship: Citizenship as a Citizen – leads us to move quickly to the notion of a citizen for whom dictionaries are proving more prolific.
The citizen.
23 – The Treasury offers us a first entry referring to Antiquity and a second more contemporary: “He who enjoyed the right of the city (as opposed to the simple inhabitants, slaves, subjects, foreigners) and participated in the government of the city.” , “Member of a State considered from the point of view of its political rights (as opposed to some condemned, prohibited, foreign) and its duties towards its country.” In ancient times, the citizen was the one who, enjoying the right of the city, took part in the political and religious life of the city. The Treasury quotes FUSTEL of COULANGES for whom the citizen was recognized for what he had taken part in the cult of the city and it was from this participation that he received all his civil and political rights. Were worship renounced, rights renounced.” In a contemporary sense, the citizen is the “member of a state and therefore enjoys the civil and political rights guaranteed by that state.” In both definitions, emphasis is placed on the rights conferred by citizenship. But this quality also prescribes duties and the Treasury thus explains the definition previously proposed by the Larousse. The citizen is then “the one who respects democratic freedoms”, “the one who has rendered high services to the State”, or “the one who, in the service of the State, pursues the good of all before his own.” In this vein, the Treasury quotes MICHELET: «A great citizen Carnot, the one who organized the victory, who guessed Hoche and Bonaparte, who saved France in spite of the Terror, was the true founder of the polytechnic.»
24 – The passage from the concept of citizenship to that of citizen will have made us go back centuries of history since, in the form of citeain for inhabitant of a city, the word appears as early as the twelfth century whereas around 1160 the same term appears with the definition: «man who enjoys the right of city in a city.»
25 – This ascent in time is however not finished.
The city.
26 – For the term «city», Larousse proposes: «In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, a political community whose members governed themselves.» And in addition, “the right to be admitted as a citizen, with the prerogatives attached to it.” The Treasury takes up the idea of an independent political community. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, “a group of free men forming an independent political society with its own government, laws, religion and morals.” For freedom of the press, the Treasury gives « the enjoyment of all the rights of citizen, of members of a city, with the privileges derived therefrom. » and to quote Benjamin CONSTANT: In the republics of Antiquity, the smallness of the territory made that each citizen had a great personal political importance. The exercise of city rights is the occupation, so to speak, the amusement of all. The whole people helped to make laws, pronounced judgments, decided war and peace.” The term quoted appears around the year 1000 in the form ciutat -city- with Latin origin civitatem and civitas.
27 – City, citizen, citizenship, the three terms finally refer to an etymological continuum which, from the history of Antiquity to the contemporary period, expresses a certain continuity of political concepts. However, this permanence of the terms must not hide a certain evolution of the ideas they cover, different according to the epochs and the political universes. The ancient Greek citizen is not that of the Declaration of Human Rights and the Citizen of 1789 and even less that of the 21st century.
28 – The lexicological approach has allowed, from citizenship to the city, to trace the thread of Ariane’s concepts flowing from each other through eight centuries of linguistic evolution. Another approach, historical and sociological, will allow the discovery of another conceptual evolution, that which, from the city-state to the individual citizen passing through humanist citizenship through the centuries, millennia and disrupts the philosophical concepts underlying social and political life.
The city, a model of political organization, from ancient times to the Middle Ages.
29 – Although the term city is of Latin origin, the reality of the concept is essentially Greek. Appearing in the eighth century BC, through a demographic and economic revolution, the Greek city, made up of a city, and its agricultural, pastoral and sometimes port hinterland, indicates a “an independent community with a political territory where, for the first time, peasants are recognized as full citizens.”
30 – In Ancient Greece, the city is first conceived and understood as a collective being within which the control exercised over the members of the community is such that the Greek defines himself above all as a citizen. In The Republic, PLATO expresses the idea that the just city generates the just man. For ARISTOTLE, it is the belonging to the city which differentiates man and animal, man is a political animal.
31 – Democracy in Athens is the equality of citizens before law and freedom. But it is an essentially collective freedom. In this there is a certain similarity between ancient democracy and the perception of Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU, a certain negation of the individual who must find fulfilment in the community that constitutes the city in which the law, to the elaboration of which every citizen participates, is more than sovereign, it IS THE Sovereign.
32 – In Rome, political thought is much later and the philosophical and conceptual approach is less successful. However, one of the originalities of the Roman political organization lies in the legal aspect of the concepts governing political life as well, imperium, auctoritas, populus, res publica.
Citizenship, rights and duties of the individual.
33 – It is on the occasion of the revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the notion of citizenship will take on its contemporary meaning. The notion of citizenship is in fact a historical construction that takes its roots in Anglo-Saxon political experiments, on the one hand, and French, on the other. This dichotomy will be the basis of two political traditions, one liberal, the other democratic, both, however, coming closer by laying down the essential principle of the universal vocation of the concept of contemporary citizenship, which distinguishes it from ancient experiences.
34 – The concept of citizenship has three major characteristics. Citizenship is first and foremost the source of the most fundamental rights and duties of those to whom it is recognized. The citizen then has the right to participate in public choices and to be a candidate for public office. As a rights holder, the citizen is finally obliged to respect certain obligations: compliance with laws, participation in public office and the defence of society are the main ones.
35 – This set of rights and obligations which is intended to be balanced for the benefit of all confers on the notion of citizenship the quality of principle of political legitimacy. The abolition of social orders, the political foundations of France’s Ancien Régime, the rejection of the religious question in the private sphere, the pursuit of essential equality makes the concept of citizenship a quality that is quintessential and of the citizen, almost an abstraction. In addition, citizenship becomes the source of the social bond. In the new society, the social bond can no longer be dynastic – all social conditions, sources of privileges are abolished – it can no longer be religious – society no longer recognizes any worship – the social bond is essentially political, each one, in application of the principle of equality, participating in public life.
The citizen, the archetype of the contemporary political individual.
36 – The rejection of its social and religious particularisms makes the citizen equal to his peers and his universalism in political society. Disembodied, disembodied from its specific characteristics due to its social or religious origins, the citizen holds a share of sovereignty.
37 – The myth of abstract equality, however, does not resist the societal evolution that can be characterized by two important traits. The posterity of the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights of 24 August 1789 is characterized by the demand for and the fulfilment of increasingly individual political, economic and social rights, thus undermining the legitimacy of the idea of abstract revolutionary equality.
38 – More immediately contemporary, the economic and social reality and its accompanying difficulties, first felt in terms of equality between individuals, are leading to a slow and inexorable decline in collective values in favour of the cult of individualism and personal success. The quality required of individuals for the proper functioning of democracy, citizenship follows the same destiny. Still present after 25 centuries of history, it is no longer the same, simply because it cannot be so. Dominique SCHNAPPER says that citizenship is a historical construction which, in its modern and contemporary conception, develops according to two different societal perspectives. In England, the emphasis is on the safety of individuals and the freedom of thought on which the extension of political rights will be added. In France, it is the exercise of sovereignty that will be the principle of the development of the idea of citizenship. Freedom will give way to democracy. In both cases, however, citizenship is both the principle of political legitimacy and the source of the fundamental social bond. Having found fulfilment within the framework of the State-As a nation, citizenship struggles to maintain its legitimacy as a founding concept of contemporary living together, faced with the advent of supra-national political groupings of which Europe is the archetype. In addition, societies are increasingly open to different cultures whose permanent mixing is a challenge to their own identity. Finally, the economic and social dimension of the demands of social actors is also a test for the concept of citizenship which, however, nothing can replace in its transcendent truth.
39 – The Republic is the third founding concept. It imposes the idea that the management of certain affairs, because they concern the whole community and the common destiny of its members, must be shared, res publica.
40 – The word Republic has known a curious destiny. While its Latin origin is known to all – res publica – the concept it covers has traveled in space and time, marrying, as is finally logical, the history of ideas in general and of political ideas in particular.
41 – If it is appropriate, of course, to refer to the works of PLATO or CICERO and to note, in the same spirit, that the concept of the Republic refers to the political organization of the Greek cities and of Rome in ancient times, It is clear that the concept has been deprecated at the time of the fall of ancient experiences, even if the political organization of certain medieval cities in Italy and the Netherlands in particular keeps alive the idea of the Republic in the political field.
42 – From this relative erasure attest uses of the term republic in much less precise meanings, the republic being used in the sense of state without consideration of the form of government in 1520. In 1549, DU BELLAY speaks of the Republic as a State that is not a hereditary monarchy which is, to say the least, unclear.
43 – One leaves the political sphere for literary circles in which the Republic designates a group of people having something in common among themselves. In this case we are talking about a republic of letters in 1648. The republic is then an association of people forming a fraternal community whose friendly closeness is due to a common interest in a cultural movement or to the sharing of a particular and well-identified social condition. TAINE spoke in 1865 of “soldiers forming a republic of brigands” and SARTRE in 1947 of “a strange republic of tenants.”
44 – But if all these different meanings seem to take us away from the public thing and the government of the city, it is nevertheless true that a certain etymological continuity links Antiquity to the contemporary period and especially to the revolutionary period during which the political significance of the concept of Republic goes, It seems, definitely settle down.
45 – Thus, the dictionary of the Middle French -DMF- reveals to us the existence of the term Republic – without emphasis on the «e»- in 1410 under the pen of Jean Le MEINGRE, dit BOUCICAUT. If the form is archaic, the concept is strangely modern since the DMF proposes this definition: “A government in which the people exercise sovereignty either directly or through elected representatives and in which power is neither hereditary nor permanent.” And to quote the memoirs of BOUCICAUT: “Live in a republic like us and be united as brothers.” A 1620 edition of this text defines “a state whose form of government is based on the sovereignty of a people of citizens.”
46 – From 1410 to 21 September 1792, date of the proclamation of the I Republic in France and which was the occasion to definitively establish the concept of the Republic in the legal and political field, almost four centuries of lexical stability have passed since collective memory has some difficulty to recognize.
47 – In the immediately contemporary language, the Republic is a “political organization of a State where power is hereditary, shared and exercised by representatives (usually elected) of a part of the population.” Another dictionary proposes: «Form of a State whose leader carries the appointment of president and is elected for a time determined 17 either directly by the people or by its representatives.».
48 – In a more concrete and historical approach, the Republic is «the political organization of French society established by the Revolution, replacing the monarchy.» The vicissitudes of our tormented history make us speak of the First Republic – from September 1792 to May 1804 -, of the Second Republic – from February 1848 to December 1852 -, of the Third Republic – from September 1870 to July 1940 -, from the Fourth Republic – June 1944 to October 1958 – and from the Fifth Republic – from October 1958. The term republic has become as common as it is useful to characterize certain forms. We speak of bourgeois republic, conservative, democratic, parliamentary, representative; it is said to be large or small, old, old or true; we distinguish the republic of notables, teachers or Jules, the republic of buddies and rascals, freemasons or the Jewish republic…
49 – If Ancient Greece and its philosophical schools are undoubtedly to be held for the inventors of Democracy, there is also no doubt that Rome has invented and practiced, with some happiness, the concept of Republic. It did so thanks to the contribution of CICÉRON, both a theoretician of political power and a statesman who knew how to combine experience of power and conceptual mastery.
50 – Unlike Greece and Athens, the cradle of democracy but a direct democracy that is out of step with the demands of our time, the Roman Republic combines the powers of representative institutions by seeking the balance of powers through mutual control of the institutions. In doing so, the democratic ideal is moving away but efficiency in the balance of powers is more successful which will allow the Roman Republic to remain for five centuries throughout the Mediterranean world.
51 – If this institutional equilibrium undergoes an eclipse throughout the Middle Ages and during the modern period, the philosophical discussions, which prepared, supported and led the revolutionary movements, from the end of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, in England, the United States and France, nourished this search between a separation and a balance of the main institutional powers.
52 – Thus, although its aura is less than that of the Athenian Democracy, the experience of the Roman Republic is more useful for our contemporary reflection because it is more in keeping with our experience today. In fact, our model is representative as the Roman institutions were, it is also situated between the ideal of a claimed democracy and a certain political practice that favours a form of elitist aristocracy.
53 – Sovereignty, as soon as the evolution of ideas dictates that it can be an attribute of the community or its members expressing themselves collectively, takes its place in the advent of a living together in shared responsibility.
54 – Attested since 1120 in the form of suvrainitet then around 1283 written sovraineté, sovereignty is a concept of French origin. The word sovereignty is a purely French term, […] It was born of the struggle undertaken in the Middle Ages by the French royalty in order to establish its external independence vis-à-vis the Empire and the Papacy, as also its internal superiority over feudalism.” It first designates an authority that is exercised without control or limitation. We are talking about the quality and authority of the sovereign prince.
55 – In the context of royalty and even more so when, in France especially, it becomes absolute, sovereignty is exercised by the king.
56 – In a legal and political approach, sovereignty is “the principle of supreme authority vested in a natural or legal person to govern the government of a State.” In the same vein, sovereignty is the quality proper to the holder in law or in fact of the supreme power in the state.
57 – We are also talking about state sovereignty. In this case, sovereignty is the status proper to the State which possesses the supreme power implying the exclusivity of jurisdiction on the national territory –internal sovereignty- as well as the fullness of international competences – external sovereignty- . It then designates the supreme political power enjoyed by the state inside and outside.
58 – In French constitutional law, the notion of sovereignty was the subject of debate when it came to opposing popular sovereignty and national sovereignty. The theory of the sovereignty of the people is a doctrine attributing sovereign power to the people. By contrast, national sovereignty is a principle of French public law according to which sovereignty once exercised by the king, is today understood by the people as an indivisible whole that finds its personification in the concept of nation.
59 – Thus, in the theory of representative government, national sovereignty is the quality proper to the nation which possesses in law the supreme power, the nation being considered a legal entity distinct from its constituent individuals and expressed by its representatives acting collectively on its behalf and not each on behalf of the fraction of the population that elected it. The system of national sovereignty is linked to a conception that no individual, or group of individuals, can appropriate in an absolute and exclusive way, the power to express the will of the nation. This applies even to the legislative body: as important as the power of Parliament is, it finds its limits in the fact that the Houses are composed only of fleeting members, who hold the title of an election held for a more or less short period of time and who may retain that title only by means of periodic re-election. The legislation, under these conditions, is not entirely up to the will of the Chambers, it also depends on the electoral body which, after having chosen the legislators, can change them. It is from this organization of the legislature that the Constitution waits for the limitation of the power of the legislator.”
60 – As opposed to national sovereignty, Popular sovereignty is the quality proper to the people considered as the whole of citizens and possessing in law the supreme power which it exercises either directly or by representatives acting under an imperative mandate.
61 – As a matter of principle, the contemporary notion of political mandate exists only within the framework of the theory of representative government in which representatives enjoy freedom of expression and decision-making disconnected from the will of voters since they act not on their behalf-but in the name of the nation, transcendent personification in comparison to the simple addition of individual wills.
62 – However, the philosophical debate that took place during the revolutionary period, particularly through the theses defended by Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU, on the one hand, and by Abbé SIEYÈS, On the other hand, it has led to a double conclusion which obliges us to find a synthesis. On the one hand, the exercise of democracy in great contemporary national groups does not allow decisions to be taken on the basis of direct democracy practices, This is particularly so since the complexity of public affairs requires a level of information that is not available to the greatest number of people. On the other hand, and in reverse of the foregoing considerations, citizens wish to participate more and more in the management of public affairs for a set of considerations which are due to the growing importance of the public sphere, to their greater material and intellectual availability and to the too strong empowerment, to their liking, of the political class.
63 – Historically, the synthesis was expressed in the first paragraph of Article 3 of the Constitution of 4 October 1958: “National sovereignty belongs to the French people who exercise it through their representatives and through the referendum.” , wording to which the Constitutional Council then gave a different operational and legal interpretation.
64 – It may seem curious that the epistemological approaches of the word sovereignty could have ignored Jean BODIN, the true inventor of the modern notion of sovereignty. By lack of analysis, Jean BODIN was often considered as the theoretician of the French royal absolutism whereas, in his philosophy, the king is only the depositary of the common interest, the defender of the common good and the interests of its subjects and their freedoms. Closing the door to a patrimonial conception of royal power, Jean BODIN promotes both the notion of republic and that of sovereignty to make one the depositary of the other: “Republic is a right to govern several households and what is common to them, with sovereign power.” CARRÉ de MALBERG insists on the change in the concept of sovereignty in Jean BODIN’s thinking from a comparative to a superlative: «In this definition, the sovereign word is understood as equivalent to supreme: what proves it is that, in its Latin edition, Bodin translates sovereign power by «summa potestas». The sovereign power thus appears to him as the highest possible power, […].
65 – If the work of Jean BODIN was subsequently forgotten, no doubt because of the specifically French evolution of political mores and the development of royal absolutism.
66 – The notion of sovereignty will regain its lustre when, having discredited the monarchy, it was necessary to find a new depositary of the sovereignty of the State and to ensure the continuity of the national community. It was a great part of the intellectual and philosophical work that supported the revolutionary movement.
67 – The idea of state sovereignty had its moment of glory in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. It finds its limits both in liberalism and in the constitution of the regional unions of states, of which Europe is the model example.
68 – Representation, finally, is the latest concept to which the notion of the duration of political mandates is accountable. The advent of the notion of representation as it should be understood in political and constitutional matters is the product of a long intellectual journey. From the fourteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, a notion of private law undergoes a transformation at the end of which it finds an operational character in constitutional matters. In private law, representation is “a legal theory whereby a person, called a representative, performs an act in the name and on behalf of another person, the principal.” This definition appeared at the end of the 14th century. The slow creation of modern and contemporary public law, by the proximity of ideas of sovereignty and nation, will constitute the crucible of the mutation of the idea of representation which will find its strictest expression in the thought of Abbot SIEYÈS during the revolutionary period.
69 – This change in the field of expression is accompanied by a fundamental change in what is covered by the idea of representation since, by approaching the public field, the notion of representation gains in quality. While the representative is, in private law, only the agent of the principal, in public law, the representative expresses with his peers the will of the community outside any imperative mandate of the representatives. We can also distinguish private representation and political representation by saying that in the first case the principal retains total control of his affairs while in the framework of political representation, the representative «slips away» the principal who has no other expression than that of his deputies.
70 – In the more than two thousand year life of democracy, the notion of political representation occupies a special place. First of all, ancient democracy is not representative democracy. The Greek citizen was directly involved in public decision-making, and the magistrates, usually distributed by lot, were entrusted for short periods, usually a year or less. Under the Ancien régime, in France, the idea of representation was implemented through the existence of the three orders of nobility, clergy and third states – and by the delegations that the provinces and countries sent to the royal power, which itself held a representative office. When, during the revolutionary period, Abbé SIEYÈS gave full prominence to the concept of national representation, he expressed himself without any reference to the democratic ideal of which he was not a follower. The thought of SIEYÈS is inherently aristocratic. Thus, Raymond CARRÉ de MALBERG notes: It is […] on the occasion of the question of imperative mandates that the speakers of the Constituent Assembly, and especially SIEYÈS, present their representative conception; For this reason, SIEYÈS establishes an essential opposition between two forms of government which it designates, according to the language of the time, one under the name of democracy and the other under that of representative government. And this is how he defines each of them: Citizens can give their trust to some of them. It is for the common good that they appoint representatives who are far more able than themselves to know the general interest and to interpret their own will in this respect. The other way to exercise one’s right to the formation of the law is to directly support oneself in doing so. This immediate assistance is what characterizes true democracy. The mediat competition refers to representative government. The difference between these two systems is huge.” These are two clearly defined regimes in their antinomy: which one should be given to France? SIEYÈS replied: “The choice between the two methods of making the law is not doubtful among us.” Here is the reason: The great plurality of our fellow citizens has neither enough education nor enough leisure time to want to deal directly with the laws that must govern France; their opinion is therefore to appoint representatives. And since it is the opinion of the greatest number, enlightened men must submit to it like others.”
71 – The rigour of the revolutionary doctrine of the idea of representation is not exhausted in these last considerations. It is not a question, for the representative, of reporting an expression, a thought, but of creating them. Without a representative, the expression of the people would not exist. Raymond CARRÉ de MALBERG added: What makes the representative, according to the representative conception founded in 1789-91, is the nature of power for the exercise of which he was elected. A representative is that only one who exercises a representative power. And the constituents of that time – BARNAVE among others, in the sitting of August 10, 1789 – define the representation in the clearest way, saying that it consists, in its very essence, of “wanting for the nation”. But there is no true will except that which moves freely, without being conditioned by a higher will. This is, according to BARNAVE, the power of the Legislative Body: The Legislative Body is the representative of the nation, because it wants for it: 1° by making the law; by ratifying treaties with foreign powers.”. And this mediation does not prevent the recognition of the law as an expression of the general will, even in political systems in which suffrage is not universal: But how could the law be presented by the constitutions of 1791 and Year III as the work of the general will, while these Constitutions reduced the legislative participation of citizens in the election of deputies who effectively exercise legislative power? They maintained the identity of the law with the general will, relying on the […] principle […] which consisted in admitting that, in the legislature that legislates, the citizens themselves, “all citizens” are present, whereas they are represented there by their elected representatives. […] It is the same principle that Sieyès had to state, with firm precision, before the National Assembly, in its meeting of September 7, 1789 when he came to define the representative system by saying that, in this system, “the people speak, act, through their representatives” and “the constituents are heard by the national members”, because “the voice of the national legislature” is nothing more than “the voice of the people”.
72 – It is only very late that, in the development of the classic debate between national sovereignty and popular sovereignty and through the combination of ideas of democracy, universal suffrage, Parliament and national sovereignty, the concept of representative democracy will find freedom of the city. This will be carried out in different ways according to the history and the particular genius of each people, in England, in the States- United States of America and in France first of all and then spread across Europe according to the evolution proper to each nation in the process of constitution. Thus, what, at the dawn of the 19th century, was not recognized as a democratic practice had to be imposed, a century later as the classic scheme of democratic organization. In the meantime, representation had proved its legitimacy to enshrine its procedures in the democratic framework, and representative democracy became the almost exclusive framework of liberal democracy. In less than a century, representation, once regarded as an aristocratic mode of organization, became the most legitimate mode of organization in democracy.
73 – Democracy, Citizenship, Republic, Sovereignty, Representation…
Each of these philosophical and political concepts constitutes a singular source to which the idea of the duration of political mandates is accountable and takes part of its conceptual and operational vigour. But it is also in their rapprochement with each other and their combination that these founding concepts constitute the matrix of the idea of the duration of political mandates and its importance within the framework of the political functioning of the democracies of our time. Thus, for example, Adhémar ESMEIN brings together representation and sovereign people:What characterizes the representatives of the sovereign people is that, within the limits of the powers conferred upon them, they are called to decide freely, arbitrarily, on behalf of the people, who is supposed to want by their will and speak by their mouth.”
74 – In the same spirit, Maurice HAURIOU links the concepts of national sovereignty and representation: “For national sovereignty to be complete, no individual must hold a representative position other than on a temporary basis. The nation would no longer be truly in control of governmental institutions and public functions if they could be hereditarily occupied by representatives.”.
75 – The five concepts are, in fact the sources of what is called political law understood as the set of rules concerning the functioning of the State in its most important functions and bodies as well as the description of rights and freedoms granted to members of the political community, and the idea of the length of political mandates is at the crossroads.
76 – In the context of the problem of the duration of political mandates, the concepts of Republic and Sovereignty refer to the need to ensure permanence through time, beyond the temporal boundaries that limit each individual destiny or the groups that exist and persist notwithstanding the succession of individuals that make up them. Raymond CARRÉ de MALBERG stresses the importance of the idea of continuity in the time of state institutions: The personality of the state results from a second fact which is its continuity. While the individuals who make up the State or who express its will as rulers are constantly changing, the State remains immutable, permanent and, in this sense, perpetual. Not only, therefore, the individuals who co-exist at each successive moment in the life of the State at these various moments form a corporative unity, but also the state collectivity is a continuous unity, as, by the very effect of its legal organization, it maintains, through time, identical to itself and independent of its passenger members.”
77 – In relation to this idea of continuity, the Republic plays the role of object. Taking the place of the kingdom, it allows a disincarnation of power and what it is about. The Republic endures transcending the succession of generations of rulers and rulers, without reference to the relations of power that once united one with another. The dematerialisation of the object of political power ensures a part of the continuity of the political organization.
78 – To this dematerialization of the object must answer a depersonalization of the actor, of the agent of political power. The change in the concept of Sovereignty meets this requirement. The People and, even better, the idea of Nation as the holder of the political will ensure the inherent permanence of political continuity.
79 – Since this essential continuity is ensured, the will of the contingent can be expressed. Democracy serves as a framework for citizens’ expression. They express themselves in terms of their experiences and their perception of the immediate public interest. Democracy and Citizenship ensure that short time is taken into account, which can best reflect the immediate experience of the individual and of the populations faced with the vagaries of everyday life.
80 – In order to make room for the possible versatility of the People, the idea of Representation comes to temper the hieratic movements. It is at the same time a conjunction, a compromise and a synthesis between long time, the need for permanence, ensured by the ideas of Republic and Sovereignty and the short time implemented by the concepts of Democracy and Citizenship. Representation is the confluence between permanence and immediacy.
81 – The five philosophical concepts are not only valid for what each of them brings to the edification of political coexistence. Together they form a combination of principles on the basis of which the notion of a political mandate could prove to be an essential element of contemporary democracy. The notion of a political mandate. Theoretical approach, operational approach.
82 – The notion of political mandate, so commonly practised in everyday political life, It must also be close to the concept of representation, which is indispensable but also problematic, the evolution of this concept, especially since the revolutionary period.
Lexicological approach.
83 – In a purely lexicological approach, the notion of a political mandate, to appear simple, is not, however, unambiguous. The Grand Larousse gives the appropriate definition: “All the functions and duties delegated by the people or a group of citizens to represent them in an assembly.”
84 – The Treasury of the French Language proposes: In public law, elected public office, notably as a member of an assembly of elected officials; duration of this function. Ex: Term as a Member of Parliament; legislative, parliamentary mandate; expiry of the mandate; request, seek the renewal of its mandate. My term as a senator, and former comrades, allowed me to penetrate everywhere, to control myself all my information (MARTIN DU G., J. Barois, 1913, p. 367):»
85 – These two definitions make it possible to distinguish the political mandate, as it is understood at the beginning of the 21st century, from two distinct concepts which it has, however, historically, been associated with.
86 – Although, as has already been said, the political mandate stems from the notion of private law mandate, the two universes have separated and the two mandates are very different. The political mandate is distinguished by its character. The mandate is general in that it confers on its holder a title of representative of the whole nation whatever the voting system and the division into electoral districts. The mandate is free, which means that the holder exercises it according to what he considers legitimate without having to take into account the opinion of his constituents. The term of office is irrevocable, which means that its holder, elected for a fixed term, cannot be recalled by his electors during the term of office. Finally, the mandate does not include a procedure for ratification by the people. It is the representation that expresses the will of the nation.
87 – Then, the political mandate which has been, since the beginning of the contemporary period, a representative mandate, must be distinguished from the imperative mandate proscribed in the framework of representative democracy, its most emblematic defender having been Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU, champion of direct democracy.
88 – In terms of legal analysis, the notion of political mandate often suffers from a common fallacious interpretation very precisely denounced by CARRÉ de MALBERG in volume II of «Contribution to the general theory of the State»: According to the most widespread opinion, that is to say, that which prevails in the great mass of the public and in political circles, the relationship that is established between electors and elected, is a relationship of a contractual nature, similar to that resulting from the civil contract of mandate. […] This is the common theory, and it is constantly emerging in the common language.»
89 – This interpellation of CARRÉ de MALBERG obliges us to clarify the relationship between the notion of political mandate and its theoretical and practical environment.
Political mandate and representation.
90 – The classical theory of representation expressed by Abbot SIEYÈS and BARNAVE must be confronted with social phenomena which are subsequent to it and which oblige it to reconsider its consistency and its formulation. The rise of the general and political culture of the population through, in particular, the emergence of the bourgeoisie, now converted into the middle class, the emergence of modern political parties, true secondary bodies of society, the progressive structuring of institutional life through the various experiments carried out in England, in the United States and in France, the reformulation of classical theory is required to take into account changes in societal life.
91 – The principles underlying the doctoral work of Jean-Marie DAUGERON will be opposed here. In the 21st century, it cannot be argued that elections are merely a technique of designation by which voters have no choice as to the policies they wish to see implemented. By defending a very classical interpretation of representation, the author denies all legitimacy to many developments in institutional and political practice, sometimes sanctioned and recognized by positive law. The work of Jean-Marie DAUGERON, which is also a particularly rich sum, sometimes consist of a discussion of what should be recognized as classical and what is not by restricting the legitimate period of the concept of representation to a point in history that excludes what was thought under the Old Regime, by Jean BODIN in the sixteenth century, but also by what has been thought since the revolutionary period and which includes the theorizing of the quest for universal suffrage or the advent of modern parliamentarism. For example, Maurice HAURIOU proposed the notion of “voting power” whose substance is well suited to the present institutional life characterized by the quest for the practice of direct universal suffrage and the wish of the citizen not to see the political life occupied by the limited circle of what is agreed to call the political class. In addition, it cannot be reasonably argued that 40 million voters are being moved solely to form the body of a designation technique or to deny that political parties, which frame and organize citizen expression, are carriers of choices sanctioned by electoral results. It must therefore be admitted that voters make choices in the policies proposed to them and that, correspondingly, they sanction the policies which have been carried out when they are asked to renew the governors. The approach of Jean-Marie DAUGERON therefore excludes any legitimacy to the notion of political mandate which presupposes an expression of the Nation prior to the constitution of the representative body.
92 – Legal theory must not deny the political and institutional life but propose a conceptualisation of this life by inscribing it in an intellectual continuum that makes sense to a set of legal and institutional practices. Finally, we will get closer to the words of Dean Maurice HAURIOU: But is it not a law of the history of doctrines, that the legal theories of a given social system are developed only long after the practical completion of the system? Flawed like justice, the theory follows from far the facts. In fact, it can only be built when all the facts have been produced, packed and filed.”
93 – Raymond CARRÉ de MALBERG perfectly exposes the theory of representation in its revolutionary purity then, relying on the doctrinal works of JELLINEK, Notes that this theory no longer meets the requirements induced by developments in political and legal practice: In the pure representative system, as it was conceived in 1789-91, the election was to be only an act of appointment of the representative. At that time, the Constituent Assembly, stringently separating the right to elect and the right to deliberate, had endeavoured to exclude any interference of the electoral colleges in the business of debating the Legislative Assembly. Legislative power, in particular, began to exist only in the Legislative Body once it was formed and brought together. The body of citizens-electors was therefore not part of the legislative body, but was simply responsible for appointing the legislators. He had only pure electoral jurisdiction and was not involved in any way in the power to make decisions, legislative or otherwise, on behalf of the Nation. Moreover, the very purpose of the representative system was […] to keep citizens away from the formation of the sovereign will.”
94 – It then incorporates the political developments generated by the birth of parliamentarism. “It is enough […] to recall the statements of the first constituents – in particular that of SIEYÈS: “The people can have only one voice, that of the national legislature” – to measure the whole distance between the representative regime of the time and that which today continues to bear the same name. In the mind of the men of 1789, the Legislature was to be in reality the organ of the people or better of the nation, which could only wish through it, which, consequently, did not possess, prior to the Legislature of will represented by it. Today, on the contrary, the institutions proper to parliamentarism […] imply that the people not only have to elect the representative, but it is also called upon to exercise some influence on the formation of the decisions to be made by them.”
95 – Building on the doctrinal work of JELLINEK, it emphasizes the obsolescence of the classical theory undermined by the development of political practices: “To claim, in fact, – as the classical theory of representation does – that there is no legal link between the people and the elected after the election, This means that it is indifferent to the people that their deputies were appointed by universal or restricted suffrage, by direct or indirect suffrage: moreover, according to this theory, there would be no difference to establish, as to their relations with the people, between seigneurial assemblies, composed of hereditary members or representatives appointed by the monarch, and popular assemblies proceeding from the election by the body of the citizens. How can we then understand the profound transformations that have taken place in contemporary states through electoral reforms aimed at extending the right to vote, and the passionate struggles that have been supported, on all sides, by the people for the conquest of the individual right to vote? Similarly, how can we explain the system of limited-term legislatures and the need for the periodic renewal of the powers of the elections45, the institution so characteristic of dissolution…? The truth is that these multiple institutions are susceptible of only one explanation: they all appear as means of law, which have the purpose and effect of making the elected assembly a special body representing the people, that is to say, specially used to express, to a greater or lesser extent, popular views and will.”
96 – Raymond CARRE de MALBERG insists on the change in quality experienced by the notion of representation between the revolutionary period and that in which the flourishing of parliamentarism is today situated. In the past, it was only a question of appointing the representatives responsible for training and expressing the general will. Today, candidates for political office are chosen by voters based on the ideas that the former propose to defend. Political parties supervise voters and elected officials and ensure the consistency of political positions common to each other. “Only in this way can the contemporary phenomenon of the expansion of the right to vote, the limited duration of elective office, dissolution and other such institutions be explained. ”
97 – Thus, what characterizes the link between representatives and the people is the limited duration of elective functions, duties at the end of which the representative is obliged to return to his electors to seek reappointment. If, for Léon DUGUIT, the classical notion of the mandate does not characterize the links between the electors and their representatives, at least the limited nature in time of the functions of representatives is particularly significant.
98 – This is essentially what Raymond CARRÉ de MALBERG reports: Among the French jurists, the one whose doctrine on the representative regime comes closest to the ideas of JELLINEK is Mr. DUGUIT. […] In order to determine the true scope of the representative system, it is necessary, he says, to stick to the facts only and to a formula that is the faithful translation of it. What are these facts? On the one hand, it is true that there is no proper subordination between elected officials and voters, as would be the case with a mandate report. But on the other hand, in modern democracies, we see that governments, and especially legislators, are appointed by citizens. And if this fact alone is not decisive, at least what is significant is that Members are appointed only for a relatively short time, at the end of which they are obliged to return to stand for the vote. They are therefore called upon, when the legislature is renewed, to express their votes if they still find agreement with their members.”
99 – Raymond CARRÉ de MALBERG seems to propose a synthesis in which the representative enjoys a certain autonomy in the performance of his duties but that this autonomy is limited by the fact that he is obliged to maintain the link which Allow him to stand in front of voters under favourable conditions. Whereas, in the system established by the Constituent Assembly, the will stated by the so-called representatives was not representative of any will prior to theirs, the present parliamentarism, on the contrary, aims to establish between elected representatives and electors a relationship of union and understanding such that the decisions of elected representatives, without being ordered by imperative requirements of the electoral body, cannot, at least, to put oneself in persistent opposition to the wishes of the latter, but whether it is a more or less similar and adequate image: in this sense, the will of the elected becomes representative of that of the voters.”
100 – Even more contemporary, Marcel PRÉLOT and Jean BOULOUIS define the «representative mandate» by distinguishing four characters that make it its specificity. The mandate shall be general, free, irrevocable and shall not entail ratification of the acts of the representative. And the authors add: It goes without saying that these four characters do not correspond, in their legal purity, to the reality of political life. On the contrary, it imposes permanent contacts and reciprocal influences between the electorate and the elected representatives. The fact remains, however, that outside of election times51, voters have no means of forcing their representatives to retire. This is enough to ensure that the system remains, in principle, representative.”
Political mandate and election
101 – In the tradition of the representative system, the notion of political mandate applies above all to parliamentary assemblies responsible for passing laws and exercising control over government activity. In a pure system of representation, it is the assemblies, and more particularly the lower house in the parliamentary systems, which hold national representation and express it in an exclusive way.
102 – Over time and the cultural development of societies, this exclusivity is less and less observed, as the procedures of semi-direct democracy are used concurrently with parliamentary expression. Thus, even in the United Kingdom, the homeland of parliamentarism, in which referendum procedures were unusual, the recent period has seen several calls for the referendum technique in order to involve the people in political orientations that could be perceived as contrary to the political traditions of the British nation. For example, in 1975 the British voted on the UK’s entry into the EEC on 5 May 2011, a referendum on the voting system was held in the parliamentary elections on 18 September 2014, the Scots have spoken out on the institutional future of Scotland. Finally, David CAMERON, Prime Minister, held a referendum on the exit of the United Kingdom from Europe following his victory in the 2015 parliamentary elections, which resulted in a «Brexit».
103 – In another perspective, the political mandate does not only concern parliamentary assemblies. The executive authorities, whether appointed directly by the people or by Parliament, also exercise a political mandate. It is the case of the President of the Republic, particularly in semi-presidential regimes and in France in particular, or of the Prime Minister in parliamentary regimes, by the very fact that its legitimacy derives from the support it receives from the parliamentary majority. Indeed, the Prime Minister of a parliamentary system, whose function does not derive directly from an election, however, it exercises a political mandate in the sense that the powers it is called upon to exercise do so derive from popular devolution.
104 – Contemporary liberal monarchies are a special case in which historical developments and the maturation of the concept of representation lead to the fact that representation and political mandate are disjointed. Historically, this is because the mandate is not consubstantial to democracy, quite the contrary. It was generally accepted in modern times that the king, the nobles, exercised a power of representation in the management of collective affairs.
105 – As regards the contemporary period, it can be argued that great sovereigns whose legitimacy does not derive, by their very nature, from a vote, nevertheless exercise a mandate of representation even if political power is absent from it. Thus, Queen Elizabeth II plays an essential role in maintaining the institutions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She also personifies the unity of the British Commonwealth across the five continents. In addition, King JUAN CARLOS of Spain was able to cope with the attempted coup d’état of 23 February 1981. He saved the young Spanish democracy.
106 – In both cases, there is good representation, but there is no mandate in the contemporary sense, and even less a political function. The degeneration of monarchical power continued until the royal institution became only a symbol, but far from being empty of meaning.
107 – But it is with regard to the general theory of the state that the term political mandate and election must be specified. The election does not result in the transfer of sovereignty or on the part of the elector to the elected official. The delegation of power does not take place between an electorate and its elected representative but between the entire national community and the body of elected representatives taken collectively. “Members of Parliament represent not their electoral college but the entire nation.”
Political mandate and dispersion of power in the state.
108 – Political power does not exist only at the top of the state. Even historically, power is likely to emerge in small communities that are tempted to organize themselves to share roles, collective burdens and resolve internal conflicts among members. The habit came to apprehend political power at the level of the State by the strong centralization that characterized the modern period conducted parallel to the emergence of the idea of sovereignty. Contemporary history, particularly in France, has been particularly frivolous in recognizing a political character to local authorities, municipalities, departments or regions. Thus, until the beginnings of the Fifth Republic, it was customary to call local powers « administrative powers ». It was not until the emergence of a new political class in the late 1970s and the major decentralisation laws following the 1981 presidential election that the political character of local government emerged from the decentralization. From a legal point of view, the political character of local elections was recognized by the Constitutional Council in its decision no. 82-146 DC of 18 November 1982.
While France is a special case, the world is not left in this general movement of recognition of substate political powers. In fact, wherever central authoritarian powers retreat, decentralization, empowerment, federalism advance.
109 – Thus, the practice of the political mandate spreads deeply throughout all societies as they develop. Citizens aspire to participate in political life, in particular through the recognition and democratic organisation of secondary communities in charge of local public services. Citizens can get involved in the management of communities and services that directly concern them or more easily control more accessible public authorities. This general movement towards the spread of political power leads to recognition of the proliferation of political mandates within the same state. One can reasonably consider that France has thus gone from a single political mandate – the legislative mandate – under the 3rd and 4th Republics to five at the beginning of the 21st century: communal, departmental, regional, legislative and presidential. There are still no European elections. The richness of public life demands to be managed, especially by the institution of political mandates, the notion of political mandate being eminently legitimate in view of the indispensable developments of public life.
The relationship to time and political temporality.
110 – Our report at the time is the subject of many debates, presentations, reflections and discussions. Individually, we routinely express our difficulty in mastering time while the time spent on work has, historically, tended to decrease, and as a result, “free” time is more important. Collectively, we see society accelerating as we integrate into our environment technologies that make it easier for us.
111 – But this time saved us is immediately taken back since the same facilities oblige us to an immediate reactivity… The facilities oblige us… The responsiveness of the individual and organisations has become mechanically and then culturally more important than the thought process. The cult of immediacy has overthrown the consideration of long time which has lost all legitimacy.
112 – Thus, by the evolution of things, personal time has lost the right of the city and social time, the one in which each one must merge, undergoes a virulent contraction. Since constitutional and political institutions are part of this same society, should they take on an identical inclination with regard to the relationship with time? And should the inclusion of this report in time be reflected in the duration of political mandates?
113 – The answers to these two questions must strike a balance between the need to take into account current, current and immediately contemporary social expression – social demand – and the concern to get out of the superficial character of immediacy in order to ensure a permanence essential to the notion of institution. The difficulty is real from two points of view.
114 – First of all, social demand is widespread in society, it results from a kind of consensus which, if it reaches a certain permanence, cannot be ignored without offending the democratic principle. Whereas, on the other hand, the concern for permanence is shared only by the responsible political leaders who must have the concern of the long term and not compromise a future which will also know its own problems which it will be necessary to make face the assets that past management will have bequeathed.
115 – Secondly, it should be borne in mind that a problem which arises somewhat abruptly on the political agenda is not necessarily superficial. The sense of anticipation required, always and especially in public management, must make it possible to avoid a good number of urgent situations. However, a question may arise unexpectedly.
116 – Should the cult of immediacy and short time have any effect on the duration of political mandates? When the presidential quinquennium was adopted, France had a debate in which reference was made to the “modernity” of the five-year mandate compared to the traditional seven-year mandate. Of course, French political mandates are generally longer than in other democracies. The idea that the pulse of society should be taken more closely by shortening the term of office is a legitimate one. But, on the other hand, short warrants, if they become too short, bring the institutional situation closer to direct democracy and the imperative mandate and do not allow elected officials to have a sufficiently distant view of the political situations to take into account the long-term interests of the society. And it is true that the problems faced by governments are often long-term issues: demographic and intergenerational balances, education, population ageing, financing pensions and living conditions for the elderly, environmental policies, for example, not to mention public investment or international problems. In all these cases, a short-term vision cannot be legitimate or effective. It would therefore seem that short terms are inadequate. The culture of immediacy, in vogue in the private sphere, should not be imported into institutional thinking where it could have harmful effects.
117 – This being so, it is not necessarily the nature of social problems that dictates the length of political mandates and political temporality. The latter has indeed a tendency to become autonomous. In this logic, political life and those who make this life the centre of their social activity adopt a temporal rhythm modelled on the most important term of the political system: The unit of time which scans and measures the political life of the society in question is the lifetime of the main political body. […] The unity of time will therefore be measured most often by the duration of the supreme political organ: legislature, presidential mandate, interval between two congresses of the single party. It is not uniform, its average value is about four years […].”
118 – It can be seen, therefore, that if, for the sake of a stronger democracy, citizens are to be consulted on a very regular basis, taking into account the public interest encourages them to adopt longer rhythms. The relationship with time has, in political matters, its specificity and a particular reflection on this subject is amply justified. In this regard, Pierre ROSANVALLON notes that the collective reflection on the duration of political mandates is far from complete: The duration of institutions and the rhythms of democracy are in fact not conceived as decisive variables. The temporalities of the policy are considered as simple technical constraints. […] Time is understood as a purely mechanical variable, increasing or reducing the contradictions and the ordinary tensions of democracy.” In fact, for Pierre ROSANVALLON, the duration of political mandates is determined solely by the fact that there is agreement that a mandate must be limited in time without any real thought being given to the precise proportion. Or, la temporalité politique ne peut être monovalente. Il s’appuie sur l’apport constitutionnel de CONDORCET : « La grande idée de CONDORCET est de pluraliser les conditions d’exercice de la souveraineté du peuple. […] CONDORCET invite [les autres conventionnels] à instituer ce que j’ai proposé d’appeler une « souveraineté complexe », fondée sur la diversification croisée des temporalités et des modes d’expression de la vie politique. […] »
EX_DJIBOUTI SEMPER ALIQUID NOVI 