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Valentina Arena
In his Social Contract Rousseau dedicates almost the entire last book to a description of the institutional workings of the Roman Republic. Contrary to the dominant reading that regards this section as out of place, the article argues it constituted an ideal model of Roman Republican institutions which Rousseau employed as a theoretical weapon in the constitutional debates of his time. By elaborating on the principles he found in ancient and early modern sources, Rousseau succeeded in presenting the Roman Republic as a form of government where sovereignty lay absolute and indivisible only with the people -- while the government depended on the sovereign and each power was held in balance by the tribunes of the plebs. Rousseau's description of the Roman political system in this particular way did not amount to an improbably antiquarian discussion; it was part and parcel of his contribution to the contemporary controversy over the mixed constitution and the separation of powers, which assumed central stage in 1748 with the publication of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws.
