This article offers an interpretation of a key moment in the long history of democracy. Its hypothesis may be simply stated in the following terms: key political theorists and administrators in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France defined democracy as a means for solving public problems by the public itself. This conception of democracy focused on inventing effective practices of government, administrative intervention and regulatory police and differed fundamentally from our contemporary understandings that privilege the vote, popular sovereignty and parliamentary representation. Moreover, this conception of modern democracy overlapped and in some cases complemented, but—more importantly for this article—remained in significant ways distinct from, other early modern political traditions, in particular liberalism and classical republicanism. What follows therefore uncovers a largely forgotten, but widespread, conception of democracy in the crucial revolutionary age from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth by asking the question, was there a modern democratic tradition?

中文翻译：

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革命法国被遗忘的民主传统

本文对漫长的民主历史中的一个关键时刻进行了解读。它的假设可以简单地表述为：18 世纪和 19 世纪初法国的主要政治理论家和行政人员将民主定义为公众自己解决公共问题的一种手段。这种民主概念侧重于创造政府、行政干预和监管警察的有效实践，与我们当代对投票、人民主权和议会代表权的理解有着根本的不同。此外，这种现代民主概念重叠并在某些情况下相互补充，但——对本文而言更重要的是——在显着方面与其他早期现代政治传统不同，特别是自由主义和古典共和主义。因此，接下来的内容揭示了在 18 世纪中叶到 19 世纪中叶的关键革命时代，民主概念在很大程度上被遗忘，但广泛传播，并提出以下问题：是否存在现代民主传统？