Voting rights for all adult males.
After the French Revolution (1789), suffrage was expanded with such phrases as "The people are the only legitimate authority..." (1793). The "nationals" of this period were "adult males" and Women's suffrage in France did not exist until 1944
from Thinking about the scalability of democracy
Voting rights for all adult males.
The French Revolution (after 1789) led to a major shift in philosophy from traditional limited citizenship to "the right to vote for all adult males."
Before the French Revolution: in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, it was limited to certain classes and owners.
French Revolutionary Period: Under the philosophy of freedom and equality, the idea that all adult males should be granted suffrage appeared in some quarters. However, women, slaves, and foreigners still excluded.
Subsequent developments: Through the 19th and 20th centuries, reform and social movements led to the eventual realization of full universal suffrage, including women's suffrage.
In other words, the idea of the right to vote for all was a turning point in the French Revolution and developed in stages thereafter.
- the philosophy of the European Enlightenment influence:
- The idea of sovereignty residing in the people, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract theory (e.g., Rousseau's, laid the foundation for the idea of broad suffrage.
French Revolution period:
- After 1789, many revolutionaries and thinkers (e.g., Sieyère, Robespierre, etc.) criticized the traditional limited citizenship and argued that suffrage should be granted to a wider segment of the population.
- Sieyère's seminal work, "What is the Third Estate?" (1789), breaks down the traditional status system and justifies broad civic participation through the assertion that "third status is the substance of the nation."
- Third Estate: One of the three major classes in the old French system, it refers to the general public or commoners (farmers, tradesmen, artisans, etc.) as opposed to the clergy (first class) or nobility (second class).
- Robespierre often emphasized the idea of national sovereignty with statements such as, "The people are the only legitimate authority.
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/すべての成人男性に投票権を using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I'm very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.