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The Seeley Lectures
La Contre-Démocratie. La politique à l'âge de la défiance
L'idéal démocratique règne désormais sans partage, mais les régimes qui s'en réclament suscitent partout de vives critiques. L'érosion de la confiance dans les représentants est ainsi l'un des problèmes majeurs de notre temps. Mais, si les citoyens fréquentent moins les urnes, ils ne
sont pas pour autant devenus passifs : on les voit manifester dans les rues, contester, se mobiliser sur Internet... Pour comprendre ce nouveau Janus citoyen, cet ouvrage propose d'appréhender les mécanismes d'institution de la confiance et l'expression sociale de la défiance comme deux sphères et deux moments distincts de la vie des démocraties.
L'activité électorale-représentative s'organise autour de la première dimension : c'est elle qui a été classiquement étudiée. Mais la seconde n'a jamais été explorée de façon systématique.C'est à quoi s'attache Pierre Rosanvallon en proposant une histoire
et une théorie du rôle structurant de la défiance dans les démocraties.
Ce renversement radical de perspective conduit à explorer un continent politique longtemps inaperçu : celui de la «contre-démocratie».
Cette dernière résulte d'un ensemble de pratiques de surveillance, d'empêchement et de jugement au travers desquelles la société exerce des pouvoirs de correction et de pression. À côté du peuple-électeur, elle donne voix et visage aux figures d'un peuple-vigilant, d'un peuple-veto et d'un peuple-juge. C'est là sa vertu, mais aussi son problème.
Car, à trop valoriser les propriétés de contrôle et de résistance de l'espace public, elle peut aussi faire le jeu du populisme et de l'«impolitique», entravant la formulation positive d'un monde commun.
sont pas pour autant devenus passifs : on les voit manifester dans les rues, contester, se mobiliser sur Internet... Pour comprendre ce nouveau Janus citoyen, cet ouvrage propose d'appréhender les mécanismes d'institution de la confiance et l'expression sociale de la défiance comme deux sphères et deux moments distincts de la vie des démocraties.
L'activité électorale-représentative s'organise autour de la première dimension : c'est elle qui a été classiquement étudiée. Mais la seconde n'a jamais été explorée de façon systématique.C'est à quoi s'attache Pierre Rosanvallon en proposant une histoire
et une théorie du rôle structurant de la défiance dans les démocraties.
Ce renversement radical de perspective conduit à explorer un continent politique longtemps inaperçu : celui de la «contre-démocratie».
Cette dernière résulte d'un ensemble de pratiques de surveillance, d'empêchement et de jugement au travers desquelles la société exerce des pouvoirs de correction et de pression. À côté du peuple-électeur, elle donne voix et visage aux figures d'un peuple-vigilant, d'un peuple-veto et d'un peuple-juge. C'est là sa vertu, mais aussi son problème.
Car, à trop valoriser les propriétés de contrôle et de résistance de l'espace public, elle peut aussi faire le jeu du populisme et de l'«impolitique», entravant la formulation positive d'un monde commun.
357 pages
First published January 1, 2006
16 people are currently reading
414 people want to read
About the author
Pierre Rosanvallon
59 books50 followersPierre Rosanvallon (b. 1948, Blois) is a French intellectual and historian, named professor at the Collège de France in 2001. He holds there the chair in the modern and contemporary history of the political. His works are dedicated to the history of democracy, French political history, the role of the state and the question of social justice in contemporary societies. He is also director of studies at the EHESS, where he leads the Raymond Aron Centre of Political Researches. Rosanvallon was in the 1970s one of the primary theoreticians of workers' self-management in the CFDT trade union.
He is diplomed from the HEC management school. In 1982, he created the Fondation Saint-Simon think-tank, along with François Furet. The Fondation dissolved in December 1999. Since 2002, Rosanvallon is member of the Scientific Counsel of the French National Library, and has the same functions, since 2004, at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris.
Rosanvallon created in 2002 La République des Idées, an "intellectual workshop" which he presides. The group publishes a review and books.
He is diplomed from the HEC management school. In 1982, he created the Fondation Saint-Simon think-tank, along with François Furet. The Fondation dissolved in December 1999. Since 2002, Rosanvallon is member of the Scientific Counsel of the French National Library, and has the same functions, since 2004, at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris.
Rosanvallon created in 2002 La République des Idées, an "intellectual workshop" which he presides. The group publishes a review and books.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 10, 2014
Un remarquable essai sur la crise des systemes democratiques representatifs, un livre indispensable pour tous ceux qui veulent reflechir et agir pour une vraie reforme de nos institutions et la creation d un vrai pouvoir democratique de controle.
December 15, 2024
The book discusses ways in which people use counter-democratic powers to surveil the government (vigilance, denunciation, and evaluation). It starts with a historical account of counter-democracy and finishes with what counter-democracy means today and how we can reshape counter-democratic powers into effective institutions that would help democracy and bring this unpolitical world back to politics.
Favourite citations:
a hard truth about democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century: an age of weak negative politics has begun. Today’s “rejectionists” cannot be compared with the rebels and dissidents of old. Their refusal to participate in the system contains no implicit image of the future. They offer no critique of the existing system as a prelude to further action. Their position lacks a prophetic dimension. In a chaotic and angry way they give voice only to their own inability to make sense of things and find their place in the world. In order to exist they therefore believe that they must vent their wrath on a variety of “rejects”: foreigners, immigrants, “the system.” Their only hope lies in hate. Counter-democracy has thus been transformed into a banal form of opposition to democracy itself. Instead of oversight and criticism as ways of increasing citizen activity, today’s negative politics marks a painful and energy-sapping shrinkage of that activity. (pg 190)
populism and counter-democracy: Populism radicalizes the three forms of counter-democracy: democracy of oversight, negative sovereignty, and politics of judgement.
1. populism as a pathology of oversight and vigilance: An active, positive urge to inspect what the government is doing, to subject it to scrutiny and criticism, becomes a compulsive and permanent stigmatization of the ruling authorities, to the point where these authorities are seen as radically alien enemy powers.
2. populism as preventive sovereignty: “anti-system” parties with revolutionary sentiment whose sole purpose was to oppose the government. Populism knows how to stoke anger and stir protest in the streets and voting booths. Populism’s rising power reflects the fact that negative sovereignty finds itself imprisoned in the immediate: it is a force radically bereft of ideas, incapable of active criticism, and reduced to the expression of resigned violence.
3. populism and people as judge: the very essence of power has been criminalized and ridiculed. All civic activity is reduced to accusation, thus alienating the citizen from government almost as a matter of structural necessity. The state is reduced to its prosecutorial and law-enforcement function, as if this were its only democratic manifestation. The vindictive populist people-as-judge shows little concern for distributive justice, for weighing the various feasible means of achieving greater equality. It suspects the beneficiaries of the welfare state of fraud and lumps them together with immigrants, both legal and illegal. The only justice in which it is interested is the justice of repression, punishment, and stigmatization of those whom it condemns as “undesirables” and “parasites. (pg 267-272)
HOW TO RESTORE THE POLITICAL FUNCTION – REPOLITICIZING DEMOCRACY (because there’s a tendency toward depoliticization, what author calls the political): Counter-democracy has its dark side: the unpolitical. This depoliticization has given rise to a vague but persistent feeling of malaise, which paradoxically has grown even as civil society has become more active, better informed, and more capable of intervening in political decisions than ever before. The solution to this problem has to begin by restoring a vision of a common world, a sense that it is possible to overcome fragmentation and disintegration. A sense of helplessness has reinforced the notion of a crisis of meaning and vice versa. The problem today is an absence of meaning rather than an absence of will. What is lacking is reflexive social action: action by society on itself. Democracy is defined by its works, and not simply by its institutions. It involves a whole range of conflicts and negotiations, a whole set of interpretations of the rules that govern collective life.
These “democratic works,” which define the way in which democracy institutes society, can be grouped under three heads: the production of a legible world, the symbolization of collective power, and the testing of social differences. (pg 306-7)
1. THE PRODUCTION OF A LEGIBLE WORLD: the very definition of political action depends on legibility, which marks the dividing line between mere technical administration and the art of governing. To govern is not simply to solve problems of organization, allocate resources rationally, or set forth a sequential plan of action. To govern means to make the world intelligible, to provide citizens with analytic and interpretive tools to help them make decisions and act effectively. (pg 307)
→ It takes work to develop an objective representation of the world in which political subjects can recognize themselves and act accordingly. The work of John Dewey offers a brilliant example of how such concerns can be accommodated. Dewey encourages us to ask why a gap has opened up between the expert and the citizen. (pg 308) Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and Democracy (1991)
2. THE SYMBOLIZATION OF COLLECTIVE POWER: If politics is to be made more visible, we need to remind ourselves constantly of the purpose it is meant to accomplish: to take a people that is nowhere to be found and transform it into a vibrant political community. Symbolization is collective reflection. It is reaffirmation of the decision to write a common history. It is a clear and sober narrative of the failures and hopes that constitute that enterprise. It is the history and memory of the struggles of men and women to institute a society of equals, despite all the difficulties. (pg 312)
3. THE TESTING OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCES: The goal is to define a community in terms of rules of redistributive justice, principles for expanding the limits of possibility, and clearly delineated norms governing the relation between the individual and the community. Conflict is inevitable in such a project, because debate brings to light the actual transfer of resources that takes place among individuals, groups, and regions, reveals hidden legacies of the past, and discloses implicit regulations. Such a debate has nothing in common with the calm, almost technical kind of discussion envisioned by certain theorists of deliberative democracy. However difficult the exercise, it is nevertheless essential as a way of gaining practical experience of the general will. It is a way of ensuring that generalization is not just a deceptive ideal or pious wish but the result of a series of arbitrages and compromises as well as a decisive choice as to the nature of the social bond. The choices to be made involve such things as old-age insurance and the bond between generations; questions of social and occupational security; the allocation of taxes; the measurement and indemnification of unemployment; and issues of long-term development. These practices must, of course, always be related to the type of regime which, taken together, they define. The goal is to expose the reality of the way people live in order to identify problems and then correct them. Restoring substance and meaning to politics does not imply finding a collective redeemer, be it the people, a class, or the masses. It is rather a matter of figuring out how the system that creates social differences and cleavages actually works and finding ways to overcome the obstacles to creating a political system based on reciprocal commitments. (pg 312-313)
HOW THE DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM COULD WORK: Electoral-representative government, counter-democracy, and political reflection and deliberation are the three pillars of democratic experience. Each contributes to the organization of the political system. Electoral-representative government provides the system’s institutional underpinnings; counter-democracy challenges the rules and injects vitality; political reflection and deliberation offer historical and social density. Yet each of these elements can also suffer from certain pathologies and generate certain perverse consequences. Left to its own devices, electoral-representative government tends to transform itself into elective aristocracy, into a governing machine. The specter of populism and of antipolitics hovers over counter-democracy. Political theory tends to be drawn toward the simplifications of decisionism on the one hand and the formalism of deliberative democracy on the other. If the three elements can be brought together in a system, however, they can work together to create a positive dynamic and lay their various demons to rest. The idea of a mixed constitution arose in the Middle Ages in the course of the search for a regime that would combine the best features of aristocracy, democracy, and monarchy to create a polity as generous as it was rational. The idea of a mixed constitution is worth revisiting today, but with a somewhat different twist: democracy itself needs to be understood as a mixed regime, not as the result of a compromise between rival principles, such as liberty and equality, but rather as a composite of the three elements described above. (pg 313-314)
Favourite citations:
a hard truth about democracy at the dawn of the twenty-first century: an age of weak negative politics has begun. Today’s “rejectionists” cannot be compared with the rebels and dissidents of old. Their refusal to participate in the system contains no implicit image of the future. They offer no critique of the existing system as a prelude to further action. Their position lacks a prophetic dimension. In a chaotic and angry way they give voice only to their own inability to make sense of things and find their place in the world. In order to exist they therefore believe that they must vent their wrath on a variety of “rejects”: foreigners, immigrants, “the system.” Their only hope lies in hate. Counter-democracy has thus been transformed into a banal form of opposition to democracy itself. Instead of oversight and criticism as ways of increasing citizen activity, today’s negative politics marks a painful and energy-sapping shrinkage of that activity. (pg 190)
populism and counter-democracy: Populism radicalizes the three forms of counter-democracy: democracy of oversight, negative sovereignty, and politics of judgement.
1. populism as a pathology of oversight and vigilance: An active, positive urge to inspect what the government is doing, to subject it to scrutiny and criticism, becomes a compulsive and permanent stigmatization of the ruling authorities, to the point where these authorities are seen as radically alien enemy powers.
2. populism as preventive sovereignty: “anti-system” parties with revolutionary sentiment whose sole purpose was to oppose the government. Populism knows how to stoke anger and stir protest in the streets and voting booths. Populism’s rising power reflects the fact that negative sovereignty finds itself imprisoned in the immediate: it is a force radically bereft of ideas, incapable of active criticism, and reduced to the expression of resigned violence.
3. populism and people as judge: the very essence of power has been criminalized and ridiculed. All civic activity is reduced to accusation, thus alienating the citizen from government almost as a matter of structural necessity. The state is reduced to its prosecutorial and law-enforcement function, as if this were its only democratic manifestation. The vindictive populist people-as-judge shows little concern for distributive justice, for weighing the various feasible means of achieving greater equality. It suspects the beneficiaries of the welfare state of fraud and lumps them together with immigrants, both legal and illegal. The only justice in which it is interested is the justice of repression, punishment, and stigmatization of those whom it condemns as “undesirables” and “parasites. (pg 267-272)
HOW TO RESTORE THE POLITICAL FUNCTION – REPOLITICIZING DEMOCRACY (because there’s a tendency toward depoliticization, what author calls the political): Counter-democracy has its dark side: the unpolitical. This depoliticization has given rise to a vague but persistent feeling of malaise, which paradoxically has grown even as civil society has become more active, better informed, and more capable of intervening in political decisions than ever before. The solution to this problem has to begin by restoring a vision of a common world, a sense that it is possible to overcome fragmentation and disintegration. A sense of helplessness has reinforced the notion of a crisis of meaning and vice versa. The problem today is an absence of meaning rather than an absence of will. What is lacking is reflexive social action: action by society on itself. Democracy is defined by its works, and not simply by its institutions. It involves a whole range of conflicts and negotiations, a whole set of interpretations of the rules that govern collective life.
These “democratic works,” which define the way in which democracy institutes society, can be grouped under three heads: the production of a legible world, the symbolization of collective power, and the testing of social differences. (pg 306-7)
1. THE PRODUCTION OF A LEGIBLE WORLD: the very definition of political action depends on legibility, which marks the dividing line between mere technical administration and the art of governing. To govern is not simply to solve problems of organization, allocate resources rationally, or set forth a sequential plan of action. To govern means to make the world intelligible, to provide citizens with analytic and interpretive tools to help them make decisions and act effectively. (pg 307)
→ It takes work to develop an objective representation of the world in which political subjects can recognize themselves and act accordingly. The work of John Dewey offers a brilliant example of how such concerns can be accommodated. Dewey encourages us to ask why a gap has opened up between the expert and the citizen. (pg 308) Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and Democracy (1991)
2. THE SYMBOLIZATION OF COLLECTIVE POWER: If politics is to be made more visible, we need to remind ourselves constantly of the purpose it is meant to accomplish: to take a people that is nowhere to be found and transform it into a vibrant political community. Symbolization is collective reflection. It is reaffirmation of the decision to write a common history. It is a clear and sober narrative of the failures and hopes that constitute that enterprise. It is the history and memory of the struggles of men and women to institute a society of equals, despite all the difficulties. (pg 312)
3. THE TESTING OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCES: The goal is to define a community in terms of rules of redistributive justice, principles for expanding the limits of possibility, and clearly delineated norms governing the relation between the individual and the community. Conflict is inevitable in such a project, because debate brings to light the actual transfer of resources that takes place among individuals, groups, and regions, reveals hidden legacies of the past, and discloses implicit regulations. Such a debate has nothing in common with the calm, almost technical kind of discussion envisioned by certain theorists of deliberative democracy. However difficult the exercise, it is nevertheless essential as a way of gaining practical experience of the general will. It is a way of ensuring that generalization is not just a deceptive ideal or pious wish but the result of a series of arbitrages and compromises as well as a decisive choice as to the nature of the social bond. The choices to be made involve such things as old-age insurance and the bond between generations; questions of social and occupational security; the allocation of taxes; the measurement and indemnification of unemployment; and issues of long-term development. These practices must, of course, always be related to the type of regime which, taken together, they define. The goal is to expose the reality of the way people live in order to identify problems and then correct them. Restoring substance and meaning to politics does not imply finding a collective redeemer, be it the people, a class, or the masses. It is rather a matter of figuring out how the system that creates social differences and cleavages actually works and finding ways to overcome the obstacles to creating a political system based on reciprocal commitments. (pg 312-313)
HOW THE DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM COULD WORK: Electoral-representative government, counter-democracy, and political reflection and deliberation are the three pillars of democratic experience. Each contributes to the organization of the political system. Electoral-representative government provides the system’s institutional underpinnings; counter-democracy challenges the rules and injects vitality; political reflection and deliberation offer historical and social density. Yet each of these elements can also suffer from certain pathologies and generate certain perverse consequences. Left to its own devices, electoral-representative government tends to transform itself into elective aristocracy, into a governing machine. The specter of populism and of antipolitics hovers over counter-democracy. Political theory tends to be drawn toward the simplifications of decisionism on the one hand and the formalism of deliberative democracy on the other. If the three elements can be brought together in a system, however, they can work together to create a positive dynamic and lay their various demons to rest. The idea of a mixed constitution arose in the Middle Ages in the course of the search for a regime that would combine the best features of aristocracy, democracy, and monarchy to create a polity as generous as it was rational. The idea of a mixed constitution is worth revisiting today, but with a somewhat different twist: democracy itself needs to be understood as a mixed regime, not as the result of a compromise between rival principles, such as liberty and equality, but rather as a composite of the three elements described above. (pg 313-314)
February 19, 2025
Here Rosanvallon attempts an assimilation of what he calls counter-democratic political action (basically ways in which citizenship keeps power in check, like oversight/surveillance or prevention/protest) into positive civic involvement that can inject vitality to democracy.
His optimistic approach is certainly refreshing, and the text is very well written and researched, even if I have my reservations regarding his idea to institutionalize counter-democratic actions to help democracy as opposed to tending to the ways in which it signals its failures (the system cannot be solved from within the system) but I fear we have no better road than to perfect the existing one, which is also what he suggests. However he fails to see how many of these seemingly balancing powers could and have been appropiated by large conglomerates or monopolized by tech giants, and subsequently weaponized against democratic institutions.
Despite these points I find his work to be very extensive and approachable, and his insights into democracy as an evolving historical phenomenon are interesting.
His optimistic approach is certainly refreshing, and the text is very well written and researched, even if I have my reservations regarding his idea to institutionalize counter-democratic actions to help democracy as opposed to tending to the ways in which it signals its failures (the system cannot be solved from within the system) but I fear we have no better road than to perfect the existing one, which is also what he suggests. However he fails to see how many of these seemingly balancing powers could and have been appropiated by large conglomerates or monopolized by tech giants, and subsequently weaponized against democratic institutions.
Despite these points I find his work to be very extensive and approachable, and his insights into democracy as an evolving historical phenomenon are interesting.
August 11, 2020
Role of the jury, negative sovereignty, tribunes, Spartan "watchers", eyes of the people, senses of the people?, Machiavelli and elite accountability, middle ages did not have executive politics, judgement as a specific democratic activity, counter-democracy as anti-democracy.
January 9, 2025
Frente al desencantamiento de lo político, Rosanvallon pone al honor la tradición del contrapoder, tan necesario para el ejercicio de una democracia real, porque el voto es un espejismo, solo la punta del iceberg del sistema democrático. El autor nos pone a pensar sobre un verdadero empoderamiento ciudadano.
November 22, 2024
realizing that by "counter democracy" he means just non-institutionalized checks and balances saves you like ten hours of confusion.
January 12, 2025
only read this for ses but it definitely helped and was really well written. interesting too and easy ish access like i never listen in class but understood everything
April 14, 2025
On the bright side, it cured my insomnia.
June 21, 2025
Sencillo, bastante directo y con ideas que parecen evidentes pero no lo son. Me recuerda siempre a Helena. Por desgracia esta escrito por un frances
July 28, 2025
The history of real democracies has always involved tension and conflict.
December 31, 2020
2,5 stars Too many pages to pass the message
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews