Pierre Rosanvallon thinks about democracy in historical terms, and his investigations of French political experience since the revolution of 1789 hold lessons for democratic thought and practice outside his native country. His latest book to be translated into English adds to a growing reception of his rewarding thought. Though a jazzed-up retitling of the more homely original (literally translated as The French Political Model), this work describes both the strictures placed upon democracy by the French tradition of political centralization and the demands made upon the French state in the name of the free, solidaristic, and mediatory field of civil society.

Rosanvallon sets his sights on the well-known phenomenon of French Jacobinism: the political tradition long understood to have revolved around a strong national state. Beating at the heart of Jacobinism has been a “political culture of generality,” which for more than two centuries has marshaled and expressed suspicions about intermediary bodies and civil society. The French Revolution had targeted the Old Regime's corporatist structure and had sought to pave over political and even social differences with a unitary republicanism made manifest by the nascent Jacobin state. The “one” was to trump the “many” in the name of liberty, fraternity, and equality.

Without denying that France's key political experiences can indeed be read through the lens of concentrated state power, Rosanvallon wants to tell an alternative history, a history that has accompanied the saga of Jacobinism and not only on its margins. The argument is that since the inception of the Jacobin worldview, a countertradition has existed that has esteemed civil society—that mediatory social space between the individual citizen and the state. French statism and centralization have always been challenged by forces within civil society, even while the latter was often disallowed conceptually and practically by the Jacobin tradition. Thus, in spite of scorning civil society and its intermediary and “liberal” qualities, the political culture of generality eventually came around to forms of modus vivendi. That this alternative history of civil society has been almost entirely neglected shows how the distinctive character of French democracy may not be so well understood after all.

The story is presented as a three-act play. Rosanvallon first showcases the political culture of generality, which from the revolutionary period forward was riddled with internally contradictory dynamics. Generality itself had three dimensions: social and formal wholism, political immediacy, and rational law as instructing the nation. The effort to institute and extend this ideo-practical vision met with resistance early in the nineteenth century. For instance, the older category of corporations, in the sense of labor associations and not the noble and ecclesiastical estates the Revolution had attacked, was presented as a buffer and palliative against national-statist centripetalism. Thus throughout the nineteenth century, a variety of forces questioned the political culture of generality on issues of “governability,” “socialization” (the state must respond to social anomie and new classes), and “liberty.” These challenges achieved by and large only modest results before the 1880s. The political culture of generality adapted to social-civil advocacy (that is, advocacy of civil society and advocacy from civil society) by shifting the issue of centralization from a political to an administrative matter, by expanding the definition of generality, by “‘liberalizing’ Jacobinism, and by invoking democracy as grounds for criticizing intermediary bodies” (p. 119 ff.).

The final part of the book portrays the “great turning point” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through which a chastened Jacobinism emerged that at last incorporated civil-social intermediation into its framework, establishing a status quo that has remained largely intact for the past century. Echoing his positive appraisal of what he elsewhere called the “silent revolution” of the early Third Republic (ca. 1871–1914), Rosanvallon writes that a 1884 law on unions and a 1901 law on associations enabled an “amended Jacobinism” to coalesce. By the early twentieth century, French political culture was characterized by a democracy “polarized” between appeals to the pluralism of civil society and a “network-state” able to integrate various civil associations into its purview. The state guaranteed the existence of associations, but also controlled them via administrative authorization. The book gives the overall impression that taking Jacobinism at face value, which even its critics have tended to do, misconstrues the fact that French political culture has never been so rigidly omnivorous. As a case in point, the explosion of associational life in post-1945 France—in 2001 an estimated 40% of the adult population belonged to one or more associations (p. 261)—has had significant consequences for the experience of democratic citizenship.

Rosanvallon concludes by insisting that the structural conflict between an amended Jacobinism and civil society has remained rather consistent from the long-term perspective. Suspicion of intermediary bodies in France has by no means disappeared, even if, for instance, Alexis de Tocqueville's damning critique of the absence of associational elements in France is no longer convincing, having been superseded by subsequent developments. We have, then, a compelling history of what Rosanvallon calls, in a marvelous phrase used to describe part of his tale but which might be applied to the whole, a serious “productive ambiguity” (p. 338 n. 58).

At times, the author tends to complicate, formulating multiple categories to classify his innumerable examples of exceptions to the French Jacobin rule. Those categories are often thoughtful and the examples reflect rigorous research, but not all of them are required to make his case, which is entirely persuasive. French democracy is often contrasted to the Anglo-American tradition; after Rosanvallon, it will be more difficult to make the claim that the “French exception” has typically undervalued free and solidaristic forms of civil-social life. In fact, it may be the distinctive history and composition of France's civil society, rather than its dirigiste state, that promises fruitful comparison for those who think about democracy.