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rule, the Chinese people were bereft of the practices that could motivate and sustain a self-ruling
government.
This paradox, which appeared to Zhang and his contemporaries as a tension between
mass action and elite leadership, is often articulated as a tension between ruler and ruled,
between those who initiate political community and those who comprise it. The Social Contract
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers what is probably the most famous articulation of this paradox:
In order for a nascent people to appreciate sound political maxims and follow the
fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the
social spirit, which should be the product of the way in which the country was
founded would have to preside over the founding itself; and, before the creation of
the laws, men would have to be what they should become by means of those same
laws (Rousseau 1987, Book II, Ch. 7).
Rousseau‘s reading of the problem helps explain why founding remains such a
troublesome matter for a self-ruling regime. To distinguish itself from other, more imposing
regimes (including tyranny), a republic or a democracy must call into being a majority, or at least
a collective, to participate in its functioning and to share its values. But avoiding tyrannical
imposition first demands an identity between what these people as individuals want—the
particular will—and what these individuals as a people want—the general will. For Rousseau, a
benevolent Lawgiver relieves these tensions by setting up those laws that can both educate and
constitute a polity.
Convention