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Rousseau's Anti–Agenda-Setting Agenda and Contemporary Democratic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2005

JOHN T. SCOTT
JOHN T. SCOTT
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Abstract

In his recent article, “Rousseau on Agenda-Setting and Majority Rule” (2003), Ethan Putterman examines how the democratic principle of popular majority rule might be reconciled with agenda-setting by legislative experts through an analysis of Rousseau's political theory. He argues that Rousseau accomplishes this reconciliation through a novel separation of powers between the legislative and the executive powers where the sovereign people delegates the exclusive power to initiate laws to the executive. Putterman thereby identifies as a solution to the problem of democratic self-legislation what Rousseau sees as the most important danger to it. At issue is not merely the correct interpretation of Rousseau's theory, for Putterman's argument raises far-reaching questions concerning the compatibility of democratic principles and institutions. After demonstrating that Putterman is incorrect that the sovereign people in Rousseau's state delegate the power of legislative initiative, I examine how Rousseau anticipates and addresses a related question central to contemporary democratic and social choice theory: the problem of preference aggregation through voting in the absence of agenda-setting institutions.

Type
FORUM
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 99 , Issue 1 , February 2005 , pp. 137 - 144
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

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