Democracy Term Analysis

Rousseau uses the word “democracy” in a way very different from its contemporary meaning. He considers democracy one of the three ways of organizing the government (which in Rousseau’s terms means the executive branch). Whereas a single administrator (or magistrate) rules in a monarchy and a small group of them rule in an aristocracy, in a democracy, all people play an equally important part in implementing the law. Rousseau notes that a “true democracy,” in this sense, is impossible—this would require everyone to “permanently” work for the government implementing laws, and society simply cannot function if every single person is a bureaucrat. But Rousseau emphasizes that the different forms of government are a spectrum, and so a nation would be a “democracy” in his sense when a majority of people work for the government implementing the law. He emphasizes that a society would need to be very small, humble, and equal for this system to have any chance of working, because people would have to wield power over their friends and neighbors without growing corrupt. Moreover, Rousseau thinks that democracies could scarcely get anything done because they distribute power so broadly, and they would be catastrophic in theory because they do not create the separation between legislative and executive powers that is necessary for laws to be formulated and applied equally. Again, it must be emphasized that Rousseau uses the word “democracy” to refer exclusively to the way a state organizes its executive branch. In its modern usage, the word “democracy” essentially refers to any state that is ruled by the people (rather than a king or small group of elites). In this sense of the term, all three of Rousseau’s forms of government are what we would now call “democracies” because lawmaking power ultimately rests with the people (who make up the sovereign).