participated in the battles of the time. The French Revolution,
explained Buonarroti, basically opposed the “order of egoism,” focused
on personal interests, commerce, and “the English doctrine of the
economists,” to the “order of equality,” which sought to achieve
genuine social equality.^12 In the short run, what Buonarroti called the
“order of egoism” won, and a strong aristocratic impulse remained
within the new democratic order. But the conflict was there to stay, and
in fact it spread all over Europe. Everywhere on the continent, notes
Dunn, democracy remained “a fiercely divisive political category.”^13
The struggles over democracy opposed revolutionaries and counter-
revolutionaries, republicans and monarchists, the reds and the whites,
and, increasingly, two sides seen as the left and the right. For many
advocates of order, even representative democracy appeared suspect.
By 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, democratic advances
had been defeated all over continental Europe, and authoritarianism
prevailed everywhere.^14 Popular sovereignty and individual rights had
to be established or re-established inch by inch, with a number of
advances and retreats, well into the twentieth century.
Democracy as such, then, was the core issue. Movements and
parties in favor of change mobilized against aristocratic, monarchist,
or authoritarian forces, and they fought for the right to vote, the secret
ballot, and accountable executives, as well as for national independ-
ence or unity.^15 Responsible government and universal suffrage were
the emblematic issues of this long battle. At the turn of the nineteenth
century, responsible government without suffrage qualifications was
the main goal. In Britain, for instance, property, tax, or trade require-
ments restricted the vote to about 15 percent of adult males. In the
United States and Canada, where landownership was less concen-
trated, similar rules entitled up to 80 percent of adult white males to
vote.^16 In France, universal male suffrage and responsible government
came together in 1877, at a time when the call for universal suffrage
(^12) Buonarroti, quoted inibid., p. 124; Marc Ferro,Histoire de France, Paris, Odile
13 Jacob, 2001, pp. 232–33.
14 Dunn,Setting the People Free, p. 125.
15 Tilly,Contention and Democracy in Europe, p. 212.
16 Ibid., p. 213; Dunn,Setting the People Free, p. 153.
Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens,
Capitalist Development and Democracy, University of Chicago Press, 1992,
pp. 43, 123, and 133.
88 Left and Right in Global Politics