peasant communities, there were forms of collective rule that prefig-
ured democracy, but these were fairly limited in scope. Demands for
popular rule and rights also emerged in rural and urban rebellions,
but they remained few and far between, and more or less inarticulate.
The main demands voiced on these occasions concerned distribution,
not representation, and certainly not representation as it is under-
stood today. None of these movements, observes political philosopher
C. B. Macpherson, “however enraged, would think that its aims could
be achieved by its getting the vote.”^2 Such rebellions normally were
defeated by force and severely repressed.
Democracy, then, had a bad name. Understood as a form of direct
rule by the people, this type of regime was overwhelmingly seen as
“illegitimate in theory” and “disastrous in practice.”^3 The independent
city-states of thirteenth-century Italy, for instance, had citizen repre-
sentation, elected magistrates, and the rule of law, but they were
viewed as republican, not democratic systems of governance.^4 In
the British Isles, the civil wars of the seventeenth century primarily
opposed social classes divided by religion and interest, not by dis-
agreements over the political regime as such. These violent conflicts
generated a new configuration of political forces and institutions that
was justified in terms of legitimacy and rights, not as a form of de-
mocracy. Articulating the preoccupations of men of small property and
of independent producers, the Levellers did have a democratic program
calling for a written constitution, an “Agreement of the People,” and
regular and fair elections. They too were defeated, however.^5
The real breakthrough came with the American Revolution. Set in a
new society with rather fluid political structures, this revolution gave
rise to a new republic and an unprecedented vision of popular liberties
and constitutional rights. At first, the republic was not understood as a
democracy, the old notion being identified with direct popular rule in
small communities, as well as with instability and excess. A republic,
explained James Madison in 1787 in theFederalist Papers, differs
from a democracy in two respects. First, it is of a much larger size,
(^2) C. B. Macpherson,The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, Oxford
3 University Press, 1977, p. 13.
John Dunn,Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy, London, Atlantic
4 Books, 2005, p. 15.
Ibid., p. 58.
(^5) Macpherson,The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy, pp. 14–15.
The rise of the modern state system (1776–1945) 85