Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Social Contract, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Freedom and Society
Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Direct Democracy
Government and the Separation of Powers
National Longevity and Moral Virtue
Summary
Analysis
Next, Rousseau argues that a state must be “neither too large to be well-governed nor too small to maintain itself.” Large countries reduce citizens’ “social bond” with one another and are logistically hard to govern, which breeds multi-level bureaucracies that are inefficient and expensive to run. It is hard to implement laws and organize citizens over a large territory occupied by diverse groups with different needs and attitudes toward the law. In trying to do this, bureaucracy tends to turn inward on itself, avoid the needs of the citizenry, and create unrest. But small countries run the “danger of being swallowed up” by large countries, and they must grow and reach “a kind of equilibrium” in order to survive. But the quality of government is more important than any of these factors. In fact, governments that base themselves on conquest and expansion inevitably overextend themselves and fall.
By pointing out the diversity among different peoples, customs, and political formations, Rousseau emphasizes that the social contract and the people’s laws will always need to take on a local flavor wherever a republic is established: no two legitimate states will look alike, and they never should, since every state must adapt to its people’s specific context. Still, he thinks that general principles (like the advantage of a right-sized state) do hold, regardless of a state’s specific character. The implication of Rousseau’s argument is that countries should be relatively small—much smaller than they are today, and probably around the size of his beloved Geneva—in order to govern themselves effectively.
Themes
