BILIANA KASSABOVA, Lecturer, Stanford University
This talk argues that between ideals of representative government and of popular sovereignty, the French revolution enunciated a distinct third model of revolutionary leadership – that of the tribune of the people, a non-elected representative dedicated to popular sovereignty, who serves as a model, a teacher, a temporary leader of the plebs. I look at three case studies – de Bonneville’s idea of the tribune as publisher and an educator, the addition of dictatorship into tribunal thought by Marat, and Robespierre’s transformation of the tribunate into a function of revolutionary government. Coalesced into the revolutionary program of self-styled tribune of the people Gracchus Babeuf, these ideas would prove essential to later revolutions in France and beyond.