It is a euphemism to say that the yellow vests movement does not correspond to any other major movement in the history of contemporary France. What has characterized social movements since 1968 was their political legibility. Either they were launched by labour unions and subsequently supported by political parties, or they were the results of spontaneous focused actions (by students, nurses, rail workers) which were quickly supervised by unions and political parties.
In both cases, they fitted neatly into the game of representative democracy which was born with the establishment and then the progressive extension of universal suffrage. The labour division of representation was clear: unions defended the categorical interests of the workers and political parties formulated these categorical demands into political proposals via the political institutions (parliament, government).
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a regime in which citizens are governed by elected representatives to whom they have delegated power. It is important to point out that its founders have always clearly distinguished this type of governance from the very notion of democracy. Emmanuel-Joseph Siéyès acknowledged the opposition between republican representative governance and democracy. In a speech given after the outbreak of the revolution, Siéyès – to whom the “Third Estate” (the people) meant “everything” – spelt out the precise difference between both regimes:
“Citizens can put their trust into some of their own. They comment on the exercise of their rights without giving them up. It is for the common good that they nominate representatives which are much more capable than themselves to know what the general interest is and to interpret their own will accordingly. The other way of exercising one’s right in shaping the law is to directly participate in its creation.
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