The Political Power of Words: The Birth of Pro-democratic Discourse in the Nineteenth Century in the United States and France
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00467.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Political Power of Words: The Birth
of Pro-democratic Discourse in the
Nineteenth Century in the United
States and France
Francis Dupuis-Déri
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comparing France and the United States, I propose a general model for assessing the birth of pro-
democratic discourse. I first explain why founders of the modern ‘democracies’ were openly and
vehemently anti-democratic. Next, I focus on two types of situation where the word ‘democracy’
is used on the political stage – when political actors want to distinguish themselves from their
opponents and when political actors want to sanctify the political regime. The first case covers
three specific modes of the use of the term ‘democracy’: (i) distinguishing oneself negatively by
discrediting the opponent (the term ‘democracy’ is pejorative and associated with the ‘enemy’);
(ii) distinguishing oneself positively by asserting one’s worthiness (the term ‘democracy’ is posi-
tive and associated with ‘us’); (iii) fighting for an exclusive claim to the term in order to set oneself
apart (several camps proclaim themselves ‘democrat’ and mutually accuse each other of usurping
or even ‘stealing’ the title). I conclude that the use of the word ‘democracy’ generally results
from a single motivation – to increase one’s own political power or to diminish the power of one’s
opponents.
Is it, then, the name given to a government that constitutes its nature?
(Camille Desmoulins, 1794)
‘Democracy’ – although virtually all politicians today identify themselves with it,
‘democracy’ (and its derivatives ‘democrat’ and ‘democratic’) indiscriminately
evoked chaos, irrationality, the tyranny of the poor, immorality and atheism at the
time when the modern electoral systems of the United States and France were
established. It was not until the nineteenth century that influential politicians
began to identify themselves as ‘democrats’ and to place the political regimes of
their countries under the heading of ‘democracy’. This paper is not the first to
examine the history of the word ‘democracy’, but no previous study has proposed
a general model that might explain the political reasons for the changes in meaning
that the word ‘democracy’ has undergone.1
The Political Power of Words
Taking my cue from Reinhart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner (Koselleck, 1985;
Prévost, 1995; Tully, 1988), I have analyzed not only the texts of prominent politi-
cal actors, but also newspaper articles, political programs and speeches, personal
letters, poems and the names of associations in order to properly understand both
the descriptive significance and the subjective power of the word ‘democracy’. The
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2004 VOL 52, 118–134
© Political Studies Association, 2004.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
THE POLITICAL POWER OF WORDS 119
United States and France are two particularly telling cases, because it was there
that influential politicians first began to call themselves ‘democrats’. This compar-
ative analysis has allowed me to identify two principal modes of usage of the word
‘democracy’ in the political field: (i) to distinguish oneself, either negatively or pos-
itively, from one’s rivals; and (ii) to sanctify the regime, a practice that, in turn,
makes it possible to distinguish the preferred regime from those embodying
ideologies regarded as undesirable. I claim, thus, that political actors use the
word ‘democracy’ primarily as a means to increase their own political power or to
diminish the power of their opponents.
The mode of distinction can be further divided into three sub-modes:
(i) Negative distinction: the recourse to the ‘bad name’ for political purposes is ‘a
device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence upon which
it should be based’: the propagandist ‘does this by giving bad names to those indi-
viduals, groups, nations, races, policies, practices, beliefs, and ideals that [the pro-
pagandist] would have us condemn and reject’ (Institute for Propaganda Analysis
1995 [1937], p. 218).
(ii) Positive distinction:
glittering generalities is a device by which the propagandist identifies his
program with virtue by use of virtue words ... These words [liberty, democ-
racy, etc.] suggest shining ideals ... Hence the propagandist, by identify-
ing his individual group, nation, race, policy, practice or belief with such
ideals, seeks to win us to his cause. (Institute for Propaganda Analysis,
1995 [1937], p. 219)
The process of labeling individuals, groups or institutions has a number of politi-
cal consequences in terms of power relations. Labeling functions not only as a
public marker to identify which actors are deemed legitimate and which are not;
often, it is also through labeling that one actor gains a certain legitimacy and
another not. In the struggle for legitimacy, actors strive to practice self-labeling and
to avoid ‘outside labeling’ as much as possible. Those political actors who manage
to distinguish themselves positively in the eyes of the state or of certain sectors of
the population can more easily mobilize financial and human resources to defend
and promote their cause. Conversely, political actors who have distinguished them-
selves negatively become more isolated. They find it more difficult to mobilize
resources and therefore become preferred targets for the political actors who have
succeeded in acquiring greater legitimacy. The attacks can be all the more vicious,
to the extent that the negatively identified actors lack the resources to defend
themselves and have difficulty establishing alliances because of the very fact of
their negative image (Bourdieu, 1982; Gove, 1975; Green, 1987; Jenson, 1995;
McAdam et al., 2001, pp. 143–8; Schervish, 1973).
When a word comes to be recognized by almost all actors as suggestive of positive
values, there occurs (iii) a struggle for monopoly. Historically, political actors asserted
their monopoly over that label in order to prevent their rivals from appropriating
it for themselves (hence, the ensuing profusion of accusations that the word
‘democracy’ had been stolen and statements distinguishing the ‘real’ democrats
from the ‘false’).
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