Jacques Julliard: "The power of opinion replaces that of the people"

3/1/2020, 6:57:09 PM

CHRONICLE - The historian and essayist analyzes the profound changes in our democracies. We are done with the great explanatory tales that have structured our vision of politics since the 19th century.

Jacques Julliard is an editorial writer for the weekly "Marianne".

Is our democracy sick? Yes, assure all the leaders of the opposition. Yes, if we believe the polls published for two years, which reveal that for three quarters of the French, it works less and less, among which more than a third considers that there are "preferable regimes to democracy. " We would like to know which ones ...

History does not confirm this judgment. Take the different regimes that have followed one another in France since the French Revolution: all of them have inadequacies greater than ours: the overwhelming weight of the central authority, or else the confiscation of democracy by elected assemblies. We can even say that since the emergence of public opinion as a major interlocutor of governments of all kinds, the control of power by the citizens has been strengthened.

The people, with good reason, are more and more demanding in terms of democracy, while the institutions, as they are, are unable to give more

Thanks to this opinion, we are moving from an intermittent and punctual democracy, to the rhythm