Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy.

• Author: St. John, Richard

By Stephen Holmes.(*) Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Pp. xiii, 337. $29.95.

I

Mainstream liberal theory paradoxically embraces both popular decisionmaking and constitutional checks on populism. In Passions and Constraint, Stephen Holmes seeks to demonstrate that this paradox represents not a contradiction, but an integrated and self-reinforcing theoretical system. Unlike those liberals who justify restraints on the majority in terms of deontologic conceptions of individual rights,(1) Holmes argues that these restraints serve an instrumental function. A properly functioning democracy, he contends, must channel and restrict its own decisionmaking authority, so as to protect the deliberative process that is central to democracy itself.

Well-known for his attacks on antiliberals, Holmes has resolved in this book to "say something constructive about liberalism itself(2) (p. ix). Although he devotes the majority of his book to defending liberalism from its critics and from libertarians who would claim its legacy as their own, Holmes returns throughout to his central theme: "The interdependence of constitutionalism and democracy presents a paradox, not a contradiction" (p. 178). He seeks to demonstrate both that liberal constitutionalism allows for restraints not only on the agents of government, but on the majority itself, and that such restraints on the majority are consistent with the principle of majority rule.

Holmes's effort is undermined by his perfectionist refusal to recognize any necessary tension between the elements of this paradox. Nevertheless, even Holmes's partial success in resolving the paradox makes Passions and Constraint a useful book for any serious student of political thought. Holmes's journey through the historical sources he finds most relevant proves at times

meandering, but his synthesis of these materials makes an investment in careful reading profitable, and his elegant style makes it enjoyable.

II

Holmes grounds his account of the utility of self-binding in the writings of the sixteenth-century French absolutist Jean Bodin.(3) Although Bodin supported the king's right to rule by fiat, he pragmatically advised the monarch to limit his power in a variety of strategic ways. Bodin's primary concern was the religious strife that had engulfed his country. In Holmes's telling, Bodin counseled the king to refrain from "attempting to save souls, punish heretics, or eliminate religious dissonance" because "[s]uch futile efforts only undermine political order and provoke rebellion" (p. 121). Similarly, Bodin reconceptualized the traditional dictates of natural law as "conditions for the successful exercise of royal power" (p. 110). All constraints on the sovereign's power were justified for Bodin by the strategic benefits the constraints would bring. The king should not tie his hands out of moral scruple, but because he recognizes that in so doing he can actually enhance his power.

Holmes identifies Bodin as "the father of positive constitutionalism" (p. 8). Holmes applies Bodin's lesson--that the sovereign can increase its power by strategically limiting its reach--to the democratic sovereign, the people. In doing so, Holmes seeks to contest the principle of negative constitutionalism: "the view that the primary or even sole purpose of a constitution is to secure individual liberty by hamstringing the government and its agents" (p. 101). Holmes argues that negative constitutionalism neglects the constructive--or constitutive-function of a constitution (pp. 101-02). The limits that a constitution puts on state authority, Holmes argues, exist not so much to keep government and its officials in check, but to foster the deliberative democratic process.(4)

While negative constitutionalism posits consistency between constitutionalism and majoritarianism by conceptualizing constitutional limits as restraints not on the majority, but on its unruly agents, Holmes...