Representative Democracy: The early modern formative period

In this workshop we explored debates in the early modern period on three central ideas: representation, the people, and democracy. We were assisted in this by four scholars working on the early modern political thought. Professor Alan Cromartie (University of Reading) presented a paper on “The Word ‘Represent’: 1300-1649”. Professor James Harris (University of St. Andrews) presented a paper on “The People and the Multitude: Pufendorf and Locke in Reply to Hobbes.” And professors Markku Peltonen and Cesare Cuttica (University of Helsinki) respectively presented papers on “Early Modern Democracy: Three Approaches,” and “Studying Early Modern Democracy: Questions and (a Few) Answers.”

Alan Cromartie’s presentation offered a review of usage of “to represent” first in Latin, in Tertullian, and then in England through the middle ages, the Reformation Crisis and the Reformation Revolution, to the way in which it was used in texts of general and religious education, to finally arrive at Hobbes’ own use in Leviathan, in Chapter 30, whose title is “Of the OFFICE of the Soveraign [adjective] Representative [noun]”, which in Latin version reads: “De officio summi imperantis”. And finally in his definition of personation: “To Personate, is to Act, or Represent himself, or another and he that acteth another, is said to beare his Person, or act in his name (in which sense Cicero uses it…) ands called in diverse occasion, diversly: as a Representer, or Representative, a Lieutenant, a Vicar, an Attorney, a Deputy, an Actor, and the like.”

Jame Harries’s paper started by arguing that in the early iterations of his political thought, The Elements of Law and De Cive, Hobbes proposed a new account of the nature of the people. He went on to discuss Pufendorf's critical response to Hobbes's account of the people, and then he suggested that Locke's failed to directly engage with it. According to Harris, Pufendorf's theory of the people is a neglected aspect of the political argument of the De Jure. Just as neglected is Locke's theory of the people in Two Treatises of Government, though there is better reason for neglect in Locke's case, in so far as he fails in his major work of political philosophy to present anything resembling a theory of the people at all. In the next two sections of his paper, Harris bring Locke’s position into clearer focus, exploring some of its weaknesses.

Markku Peltonen’s presentation examined the links between democracy and representation from 1531, when the word “democracy” made its entrance into English political parlance, to the end of the English free state in 1653. Peltonen argued that historians have been increasingly interested in early modern notions of democracy, and it has become clear that the period was much more important for the overall development of the understanding of democracy than has hitherto been assumed. In his view, however, there is still an overwhelming consensus that the idea of representative democracy was only broached in the late eighteenth century. Peltonen proposed to reconsider this received account arguing instead that democracy and representation were closely linked during the English Revolution. Before the civil war, democracy was understood as the direct rule of the people themselves and by far the worst form of government. However, by the early 1640s, in a series of political and ecclesiastical debates, a profound change in the understanding of democracy took place, and, for the first time, democracy began to be associated with representation. When the free state was established in 1649, several of its protagonists not only defended the republic as a democracy but argued that it was representation which made democracy viable in the first place.

Cesare Cuttica’s presentation started by suggesting that who ‘the people’ were in early modern England is a notoriously difficult question to answer. Past voices were often ambiguous about whom they meant when referring to ‘the people’, as a result of which historians grapple with such categories as ‘commonalty’, ‘populace’, ‘middling sort’ and so on. In his paper, Cuttica’s main goal was to explore the ways in which a number of late-Tudor and Stuart political thinkers – both canonical and minor ones – identified ‘the multitude’ with democratic practices. By doing so, they distinguished this dangerous group (whose members were considered to be irrational, fickle and cruel) from ‘the people’. The latter corresponded, in fact, to the better sort of the population, and as such were held capable of assuming political responsibilities in the polity. Democracy was thus accused of enabling the direct participation of all adult males (and, in some cases, of women to boot) to government. This scenario was deemed to have catastrophic consequences far beyond the realm of politics: democracies were attacked for promoting a way of life that altered the societal, economic and moral foundations of society. Ultimately, Cuttica’s paper was aimed to do two things. First, to casts light on the idea that democracy was a political failure because of the moral and intellectual deficiencies of its people. Second, to show how, shaped by Plato, this view became prominent in early modern England from where it went on to influence subsequent political reflection.