Contemporary democratic governments have evolved from a political system that was conceived by its founders as opposed to democracy. Current usage distinguishes between “representative” and “direct” democracy, making them varieties of one type of government. However, what today we call representative democracy has its origins in a system of institutions (established in the wake of the English, American, and French revolutions) that was in no way initially perceived as a form of democracy or of government by the people.

Rousseau condemned political representation in peremptory terms that have remained famous. He portrayed the English government of the eighteenth century as a form of slavery punctuated by moments of liberty. Rousseau saw an immense gulf between a free people making its own laws and a people electing representatives to make laws for it. However, we must remember that the adherents of representation, even if they made the opposite choice from Rousseau, saw a fundamental difference between democracy and the system they defended, a system they called “representative” or “republican.” Thus, two men who played a crucial role in establishing modern political representation, Madison and Sieves, contrasted representative government and democracy in similar terms. This similarity is striking because, in other respects, deep differences separated the chief architect of the American Constitution from the author of Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat? in their education, in the political contexts in which they spoke and acted, and even in their constitutional thinking.

Madison often contrasted the “democracy” of the city-states of Antiquity, where “a small number of citizens … assemble and administer the government in person,” with the modern republic based on representation.