Popular or Populist Republicanism? Sovereignty vs. Representation from Rousseau to Yellow Vests

During the 2010s, several social movements, diverse in their nature and their scope, from the 15-M movement in Spain to the Yellow Vest movement in France and the 2019 uprisings in Lebanon, Chile or Hong-Kong, shared a fundamental characteristic: they articulated a radical critique of the institutions of representative government, in the name of the people and a “real” democracy. While this critique has often been deemed populist or related to radical democracy, my contention is that it may be more profitably described as a form of popular republican protest. Indeed, these movements, especially the 2018-2019 uprisings, often lacked both the distinctive populist concept of representation, based on embodiment by a charismatic leader, or the radical democratic appeal to direct plebeian participation. For example, in the case of the Yellow Vests, the protesters pleaded for a more moral and less partisan form of government, and a commitment of politicians to the general interest. Even more: it led many Gilets jaunes to refuse most forms of representation in the movement itself, leading to multiple problems of coordination, but also to unexpected forms of embodiment, and a constant distance with most radical left-wing forces. I will attempt to show that these arguments against representation stem from a popular republican tradition, distinctive from the neoroman one uncovered by J. G. A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, as it focuses on popular sovereignty at least as much as on non-domination. This tradition may find its roots in Rousseau's political thought and reappeared on several occasions in French history. In this paper, I will first present different hypotheses regarding the historical origin of this tradition; then I will give some elements for a popular republican theory of representation, based on four related ideals: popular sovereignty, general interest, non partisanship and moral authority. Finally, I will discuss its historical and conceptual links, but also differences, with populist notions of representation, and the more radical plebeian democratic endeavours.