Key Arguments

• Founding acts such as sanctioning a body of laws, establishing a perpetual government, or arranging a permanent system of elections are insufficient to sustain sovereignty, implying that sovereignty is an ongoing activity, not a single event.
• Rousseau insists on 'fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or prorogued,' so that the people are 'legitimately called together by law, without need of any formal summoning'; this institutionalizes the Sovereign’s regular reappearance and makes it independent of executive will.
• He argues that the very command to assemble must itself be an act of law: 'every assembly of the people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all its acts as null and void, because the command to assemble should itself proceed from the law,' making legality of convocation a condition of sovereign validity.
• Because the appropriate frequency of such assemblies depends on many circumstances, no precise universal rule can be given; yet Rousseau affirms a general principle: 'the stronger the government the more often should the Sovereign show itself,' suggesting that a powerful executive must be counterbalanced by more frequent direct exercise of popular sovereignty.

Source Quotes

It is not enough for the assembled people to have once fixed the constitution of the State by giving its sanction to a body of law; it is not enough for it to have set up a perpetual government, or provided once for all for the election of magistrates. Besides the extraordinary assemblies unforeseen circumstances may demand, there must be fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or prorogued, so that on the proper day the people is legitimately called together by law, without need of any formal summoning.

It is not enough for the assembled people to have once fixed the constitution of the State by giving its sanction to a body of law; it is not enough for it to have set up a perpetual government, or provided once for all for the election of magistrates. Besides the extraordinary assemblies unforeseen circumstances may demand, there must be fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or prorogued, so that on the proper day the people is legitimately called together by law, without need of any formal summoning. But, apart from these assemblies authorised by their date alone, every assembly of the people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all its acts as null and void, because the command to assemble should itself proceed from the law.

Besides the extraordinary assemblies unforeseen circumstances may demand, there must be fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or prorogued, so that on the proper day the people is legitimately called together by law, without need of any formal summoning. But, apart from these assemblies authorised by their date alone, every assembly of the people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all its acts as null and void, because the command to assemble should itself proceed from the law. The greater or less frequency with which lawful assemblies should occur depends on so many considerations that no exact rules about them can be given.

The greater or less frequency with which lawful assemblies should occur depends on so many considerations that no exact rules about them can be given. It can only be said generally that the stronger the government the more often should the Sovereign show itself. This, I shall be told, may do for a single town; but what is to be done when the State includes several?

Key Concepts

• It is not enough for the assembled people to have once fixed the constitution of the State by giving its sanction to a body of law; it is not enough for it to have set up a perpetual government, or provided once for all for the election of magistrates.
• there must be fixed periodical assemblies which cannot be abrogated or prorogued, so that on the proper day the people is legitimately called together by law, without need of any formal summoning.
• every assembly of the people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all its acts as null and void, because the command to assemble should itself proceed from the law.
• It can only be said generally that the stronger the government the more often should the Sovereign show itself.

Context

Opening portion of Book III, Chapter XIII ('the same (continued)'), where Rousseau continues his discussion of how sovereign authority maintains itself by specifying institutional requirements for lawful, periodic popular assemblies and their relation to governmental strength.