Ancien Regime Ballots: A Double Historicization of Electoral Practices

In: Constellations: an international journal of critical and democratic theory, Band 11, Heft 1, S. 44-60

Abstract

Calls for the "rehistoricization" of the institution of voting to better understand the varied electoral practices of the ancien regime, which have proven distinct from Emile Durkheim's & Pierre Bourdieu's respective logics of producing decisions. The religious sphere is addressed to reveal the importance of electoral processes in the transmission of power. Demonstrated is the institutional reproduction resulting from a strictly controlled transmission of authority & organized cooptation evident in many early-modern institutions. The renunciation of the necessity of unanimity in favor of the majority is addressed. Secrecy regarding deliberations & particular opinions is seen to be critical to an institution's capacity to speak with a single voice & confront the monarchy as a body, with corporative voting serving dual functions of resolving internal conflicts & presenting cohesion externally. Corporative voting is viewed as fundamental to ancien regime society. The case of the 15th-century union of Parisian apothecaries & spice merchants is used to illustrate the pursuit of institutional separation, with the apothecaries' seeking to distinguish themselves professionally from the spice merchants. The result was institutional recognition & a degree of self-determination for the apothecaries by way of various systems of parity that hollowed out majority voting but preserved the official unity of the community. It is concluded that, rather than clashing with the dominant social representations of the ancien regime monarchy's social world, elections & voting constituted two key bases of it. J. Zendejas