Democracy Beyond Liberalism: Popular Control and Plebeian Traditions in England, the United States, and France

Abstract

Challenging the identification of democracy with liberalism, this essay reconstructs, through a materialist and comparative approach, a historical repertoire of non-liberal democracy in England, the United States, and France. In contrast to the proprietary engineering of representative government, it highlights the emergence of popular controls, such as short and recallable mandates, binding instructions, communal ratifications, initiative, referendums, and recall, articulated with social rights understood as conditions of freedom. The central argument is that modern democratization did not result from a progressively inclusive liberalism, but from plebeian struggles that forced institutional rewritings, expanded citizenship, and redefined freedom as a material practice. By reinscribing class conflict, colonial hierarchies, and patriarchal domination within the political form, this democratic tradition shows that there is no legitimate representation without popular control and no effective freedom without concrete means of existence. Finally, the essay argues that this historical repertoire remains relevant for understanding the legitimacy crisis of liberal representative government and the rise of the new far right.

Democracy; Liberalism; Political Representation.