Bernard Manin (1951-2024)
Political theory has just lost one of its towering figures: Bernard Manin passed away on Friday November 1, 2024. Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and professor at New York University, he was world-renowned for his work on democracy, representation and liberalism. His teachings and writings, a unique blend of conceptual clarification, historical explanation, rereading of the classics and analysis of political institutions, had a profound impact on several generations of students and researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.
After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure de la rue d’Ulm and obtaining the agrégation in philosophy, he embarked on a dual career in France and the United States, the countries between which he has divided his life. Recruited by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in 1982, he subsequently became a professor at Science Po Paris, before being elected to the EHESS in 2005. He also spent time at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, before joining the political science faculty at the University of Chicago in 1990, and then at New York University in 1996. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Lausanne, Liège and Urbino, and was awarded the CNRS silver medal in 2015.
Bernard Manin’s first works, published with Alain Bergounioux, focused on social democracy (La social-démocratie ou le compromis, 1979 ; Le régime social-démocrate, 1989). Among other things, they showed why social democracy must be understood as a political regime and not simply as a political orientation. Against the dominant theories of the time, they demonstrated the impact of historical circumstances where social democracy had prevailed: the absence of universal suffrage at the time when socialist parties were being formed; the chronological precedence of industrialization; and the workers’ movement over the establishment of parliamentary democracy.
Manin wrote a number of landmark papers that displayed his characteristic precision and clarity, as well as the breadth of his historical and philosophical erudition. Notable among them, from the mid-1980s onwards, was his work on democratic deliberation, which prefigured and inspired the “deliberative turn” subsequently taken by political theory at international level (“On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation” [1985] 1987). The same is true of his study of constitutional devices of exception, in which he analyzed and compared Roman dictatorship, the state of siege, the suspension of habeas corpus and martial law with respect to the temporary abolition of the constitutional order (“The Emergency Paradigm and the New Terrorism,” 2008).
However, Manin gained international renown with the publication of Principles of Representative Government, which appeared in French in 1995 and in English and 1997, and was translated into many languages. It became a classic of political theory. Through a meticulous study of institutional choice during the three modern revolutions, in Great Britain, the United States, and France, this book greatly renewed our understanding of representative democracy. It provides an account of the triumph of election as a means of appointing rulers at the end of the eighteenth century, by comparing the governments that emerged from these revolutions with regimes that, from Athenian democracy to the Italian republics of the Renaissance, saw the drawing of lots as the egalitarian procedure par excellence. Manin argued that the modern use of election secured an aristocratic element at the heart of representative democracy, while reflecting a new conception of legitimacy that gave priority to the consent of the governed. The book also identifies the characteristic principles of representative government: the regular election of rulers by the governed, the absence of imperative mandates, the freedom of public opinion, and public discussion before decision-making. The plasticity of these principles has enabled the system to adapt to the social transformations of the last two centuries.
Bernard Manin’s research on liberalism followed the same approach, studying the discourses and practices of the past to shed light on the present. In institutional terms, he distinguished between two models of power limitation: limitation by rule or by demarcation between spheres of competence, and limitation by balance or equilibrium. Philosophically, he contrasted monistic liberalism, of which Hayek is the paragon, with pluralist liberalism, which admits the multiplicity of conceptions of the good. In terms of intellectual history, he gave an original interpretation of Montesquieu’s thought in a series of studies, which have now been brought together in a recent book (Montesquieu, 2024). His work, exceptional in its depth and influence, is not yet fully published: in addition to two collections of his articles on deliberation and liberalism, a groundbreaking work on the French Revolution and the sources of the Terror, entitled Un voile sur la liberté, will soon appear.
Students and colleagues who had the good fortune to meet Bernard Manin will also remember, above all, his extraordinary personality. His benevolence and modesty despite his renown, his passion for knowledge and his egalitarian manner, his humor that was both respectful and mischievous, and his irrepressible taste for intellectual conversation made him an incomparable interlocutor.
Charles Girard, philosopher (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
Melissa Schwartzberg, political theorist (New York University)
Philippe Urfalino, sociologist (CNRS/EHESS)