Index

Conclusion

1. I have explored the forms assumed by this disenchantment in France in Le sacre du citoyen: Histoire du suffrage universel en France (Paris: Gallimard, 1992); see esp. 3.1 (“Le pouvoir du dernier mot”), 299–338. 2. See Pierre Rosanvallon, Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 2011), esp. 203–218. 3. See Pierre Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, trans.

Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. 61–66, 253–257, 291–299. 4. I explain the reasons for my reluctance to proceed in this direction in the postface to Florent Guénard and Sarah AlMatary, eds., La démocratie à l’œuvre: Autour de Pierre Rosanvallon (Paris: Seuil, 2015). 5. In France these tasks are partly combined in the mission of the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life and, to a lesser degree, that of the

Commission for Access to Administrative Documents. 6. In France, the constitutional nonrecognition of a fourth branch of government has led the Constitutional Council to restrict the prerogatives of the

High Authority for Transparency in Public Life. On the intellectual history of plans for such a fourth branch, see my discussion of new directions for popular sovereignty in Rosanvallon, “From the Past to the Future of Democracy” [2000], in the volume of my selected essays edited and translated by Samuel Moyn, Democracy Past and Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), esp. 199–204; also my books Counter-Democracy, 76–103, and Democratic Legitimacy, 154–167. 7. It is in accordance with such just such a principle of functional representativeness that unions in France have a seat on the boards of directors of a whole range of public agencies. On this point see Rosanvallon, La question syndicale: Histoire at avenir d’une forme sociale (Paris: CalmannLévy, 1988), 35–44. 8. In the French case this would lead also to a reconsideration of the role of the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council, which in its present form constitutes a roughandready compromise between the commission model as I have described it here and the parliamentary assembly model. 9. Recall that this is what representation was once expected to do, before it came to be associated with the idea of mere electoral ratification. On this point see John P. Reid, The Concept of Representation in the Age of the

American Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), esp. 31–42, 140–146. 10. It should be kept in mind that the prohibition against running for office during the French Revolution, which no one today would think for a mo

ment of reinstating, had exactly this effect—of preventing candidates from promising too much. 11. One might imagine choosing at random the members of a certain type of representative assembly, but not the president of the Republic and his ministers, or their counterparts in systems similar to that of France. 12. “Things were better in the old days,” as many people say today.