From Deliberation to Demonstration

Paula Cossart's book on the invention of political rallies is a major contribution to the history of repertories of political action in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as to the sociology of politicisation and the debates on the political foundations of deliberative democracy. The author demonstrates how, in the last third of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the project to transform a crowd into a people depended on a belief in the virtues of the public contradictory meeting. Cossart stresses that demopedic fervour faded progressively in a climate of increasing social antagonism. This resulted in the political meeting sliding into a gymnopedic frenzy at the end of the 1930s, and the hybridisation of political rallies and street demonstrations. -- Olivier Fillieule, University of Lausanne

Paula Cossart's remarkable book traces the transformation of a fundamental institution of democratic life, the public meeting, across almost a century. What began as a space for public debate and civic education metamorphosed into a theatre for the expression of enthusiasm and dissemination of propaganda. This is political history of a new kind, focused not so much on ideology and voting behaviour, as on practices and technologies. It makes for compelling reading and will be of interest to all historians of democracy, whatever the national setting. -- Philip Nord, Princeton University

This beautiful book fills a gap in political history: dedicated to political meetings, it complements the historical sociology of politicisation in French society of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its contribution is to reconnect with a useful method of hybridisation between the socio-historical argument and theoretical questions on the current forms of political deliberation and their uncertain efficacy. This insightful and original book will broaden our understanding of the present tension between participation and representation in modern politics. -- Yves Déloye, Sciences Po Bordeaux

A Doctor in Political Science, Paula Cossart is now Assistant Professor in sociology at the University of Lille and Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. She has been Research Assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University (2002-2004), Invited Scholar at New York University (2012) and Harvard University (2013). Her current research focuses on the historical sociology of participatory democracy. Dr Cossart is particularly interested in the genealogy of deliberative devices. Among her publications are Vingt-cinq ans d'amours adultères: Correspondance sentimentale d'Adèle Schunck et d'Aimé Guyet de Fernex, 1824-1849 (Fayard, 2005); (with WM Keith) The Search for "Real" Democracy: Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation in France and the US, 1870-1940, in Kock Ch., Villadsen L. (ed.), Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation, Penn State University Press, 2012; (co-editor with J Talpin and WM Keith) La participation au prisme de l'histoire, issue of Participations. Revue de sciences sociales sur la démocratie et la citoyenneté, 2012.