Key Arguments

• Rousseau defines sovereignty as nothing other than the exercise of the general will; since will either is or is not general, it cannot be partitioned: if it is the will of the body of the people, it is sovereign; if only of a part, it is not.
• He distinguishes clearly between a general will and a partial will: when the will is that of the whole people and is declared, it constitutes law; when it is that of only a part, it is merely a particular will or an act of magistracy, at most a decree.
• Attempts to divide sovereignty by separating functions (e.g., legislative vs. executive) rest on a conceptual error: they mistake for parts of sovereignty what are only emanations or applications of it.
• Acts commonly treated as sovereign, such as declaring war and making peace, are in fact only applications of existing laws to particular circumstances, not law‑making itself, and therefore do not constitute sovereignty.
• Whenever sovereignty appears divided, this is an illusion arising from confusing subordinate rights and executive competences—which always presuppose a supreme will whose execution they sanction—with sovereignty itself.

Source Quotes

CHAPTER II: that sovereignty is indivisible Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general; it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy—at the most a decree.

CHAPTER II: that sovereignty is indivisible Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general; it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy—at the most a decree. But our political theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle, divide it according to its object: into force and will; into legislative power and executive power; into rights of taxation, justice and war; into internal administration and power of foreign treaty.

The conjuring tricks of our political theorists are very like that; they first dismember the body politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not how. This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it. Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the idea attached to the word law has been defined.

This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it. Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the idea attached to the word law has been defined. If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find that, whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction the execution.

Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the idea attached to the word law has been defined. If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find that, whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction the execution. It would be impossible to estimate the obscurity this lack of exactness has thrown over the decisions of writers who have dealt with political right, when they have used the principles laid down by them to pass judgment on the respective rights of kings and peoples.

Key Concepts

• Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general;
• it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy—at the most a decree.
• This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it.
• thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law
• the rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction the execution.

Context

Opening and middle of Book II, Chapter II ('that sovereignty is indivisible'), where Rousseau argues from his prior definition of sovereignty as the exercise of the general will to the conclusion that it cannot be divided, and reclassifies many so‑called 'sovereign' powers as mere applications or emanations of a single supreme will.