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Full Idea
Rousseau's idea of popular sovereignty is a much more radical idea of self-government, because he insists that the consent of the people has to have a real means of expression.
Gist of Idea
Rousseau insists that popular sovereignty needs a means of expressing consent
Source
report of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5
Book Ref
Oksala,Johanna: 'Political Philosophy' [Hodder and Stoughton 2013], p.62
A Reaction
Presumably Hobbes's 'contract' is forgotten in the mists of time, and ceases to be of any interest to a ruler (such as Charles I, who thought God must have appointed him). Perhaps Britain needs an annual ceremony reaffirming the monarch.
Related Idea
Idea 20566 Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala]
| 20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
| 19930 | Sovereignty must include the power to make people submit to it [Spinoza] |
| 19787 | People accept the right to be commanded, because they themselves wish to command [Rousseau] |
| 20567 | Rousseau insists that popular sovereignty needs a means of expressing consent [Rousseau, by Oksala] |
| 19801 | Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, which can never be delegated [Rousseau] |
| 19805 | Just as people control their limbs, the general-will state has total control of its members [Rousseau] |
| 19818 | Political laws are fundamental, as they firmly organise the state - but they could still be changed [Rousseau] |
| 19848 | The sovereignty does not appoint the leaders [Rousseau] |
| 23046 | States only have full authority if they heed the claims of human fellowship [Green,TH] |
| 23418 | Liberal state legitimacy is based on a belief in justice, not in some conception of the good life [Kymlicka] |
| 20086 | Nowadays sovereignty (once the basis of a state) has become relative [Reybrouck] |
| 20608 | Unjust institutions may be seen as just; are they legitimate if just but seen as unjust? [Tuckness/Wolf] |