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Arthur Ghins
This article claims that public opinion can be taken as an index of Constant's liberalism. It follows Constant's shifting views on public opinion from his republican beginnings to his mature liberalism of the second restoration. It shows how Constant came to consecrate the pre-eminence of public opinion over political authority, and how, during the restoration years, he started envisaging public opinion as a pluralist space of diverging opinions, thereby parting ways with a French tradition that conceived of public opinion as a unanimous entity. The fact that this move towards pluralism occurred so late invites us to reconsider not only the chronology of Constant's liberalism, which is often said to originate in the Principles of Politics (1806). It also questions his position as a champion of pluralism within a French political tradition known for its collectivist tendencies. The article concludes with an invitation to grant a more significant place to Constant in future studies on the concept of public opinion in modern France.
