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Montesquieu Vs Rousseau Research Paper

1179 Words5 Pages

Rousseau grew up in the small city-state of Geneva, Switzerland, where the form of local government is a direct democracy. Their entire town convenes together to decide on the laws of the city. Rousseau argues for a revolution to establish the entire French peoples as the state’s sovereign who make the laws according to the general will. Rousseau says that “Were there a people of gods, it would govern itself democratically” (The Social Contract, 180). Rousseau argues that the general will of the people cannot be decided by elected representatives, but rather by a direct democracy, similar to the one he grew up in. Rousseau’s solution is for the people to overthrow the French government, which would dissolve their current fraudulent social contract so that they can willingly enter into a social contract where they give up all their rights for the good of the whole community, …show more content…

About a decade after the deaths of Montesquieu and Rousseau, the Founding Fathers sit down on the other side of the world to write the U.S. Constitution. There take the main points from both writers to form the basis of their new government, which is currently one of the most powerful governments in the world today. From Montesquieu, they incorporate his idea of a separation of powers and set up a system of checks and balances so that one person, or group of people, would never be able to gain so much power that it leads to despotism. From Rousseau, the Founding Fathers take his idea of a direct democracy and use it to create the system by which the Presidents will be elected. While Montesquieu and Rousseau’s ideas seem on very opposite ends of the spectrum during the time they were alive, they will eventually be combined with one another to form the basis of the United States

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