This book revisits the emergence of democratic thought in France and examines how French liberals responded to that development. By focusing on public opinion and popular sovereignty—two concepts that have often been studied separately—it reveals a pivotal historical shift in the concept of democracy. During the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s rule, major theorists closely associated democracy with direct popular sovereignty. In the early nineteenth century, French liberals began to challenge this association. Initially rejecting democracy, they reclaimed and redefined it from the 1830s onwards, linking it with rule by public opinion rather than direct popular sovereignty. This story holds a surprising conclusion: much of (liberal) democratic theory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has understood democracy not as it was originally conceived by democrats (as direct popular sovereignty), but rather in terms initially developed by the opponents of democrats—namely, as the rule of public opinion.

The book starts by examining how Rousseau introduced the distinction between public opinion and popular sovereignty. It then explores how key thinkers from the Revolution to the Second Empire understood and applied these concepts in changing political contexts. The analysis covers several representative systems proposed during this period: “representative democracy” (Condorcet and the Montagnards), “democracy purged of all its drawbacks” (Bonaparte and his collaborators), “government by opinion” (Benjamin Constant), “federal democracy” (Tocqueville), and “liberal democracy” (a term invented by French liberals of the 1860s). Along the way, the book considers how liberal discussions of democracy overlapped with a defence of empire. The epilogue sheds light on how the concept of “liberal democracy,” initially defined in opposition to “Caesarism” in the 1860s, was redeployed by French liberals throughout the twentieth century against shifting enemies — “totalitarianism” from the 1930s onwards, and “populism” since the 1980s.

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