Conclusion

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Public Support ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Final Evaluation ◽  
Moral System ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
National Solidarity ◽  
Supreme Being ◽  
The Revolution

Why did the whole idea and ethos of the Supreme Being disappear so quickly and completely? Was the reason that Robespierre took no steps to establish firmly his new moral system because he fatally mis-evaluated the level of public support? What should the final evaluation of the effect of the Festival be both on the problem of and acceptable republican national morality and on the progress of the Revolution? The final analysis of the Festival must be that it was a great day of national solidarity during which the entire nation celebrated joyfully.

Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Great Depth ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Major Event ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral System ◽  
Political Duty ◽  
Supreme Being ◽  
The Revolution

In Year 2 of the Revolution (1794) Robespierre, seeking to establish a new deist national morality created the Festival of the Supreme Being celebrated on 20 Prairial Year 2 (8 June 1794). This book begins by tracing the progress in the development of Robespierre’s thinking on the importance of the problem which the lack of any acceptable national moral system through the early years of the Revolution had created, his vision of a new attitude towards religion and morality, and why he chose a Revolutionary Festival to launch his idea. It focusses on the importance of the Festival by showing that it was not only a major event in Paris, with a huge man-made mountain on the Champ de Mars; it was also celebrated in great depth in almost every city, town and village throughout France. It seeks to redefine the importance of the Festival in the history of the Revolution, not, as historians have traditionally dismissed it, merely as the performance of a sterile and compulsory political duty, but on the contrary, as a massively popular national event. The author uses source material from national and local archives describing the celebrations as well as the reaction to the event and its importance by contemporary commentators. This is the first book since the 1980s and the only work in English to focus on this Festival and to redefine its importance in the development of the Revolution.

Discursive Democracy and New Labour: Five Ways in Which Decision-Makers Manage Citizen Agendas in Public Participation Initiatives

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Williams
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Labour Policy ◽  
The Government

New Labour's conceptualisation of public participation in local government creates a tension in public participation practice. Government legislation and guidance require local authorities to develop and provide citizen-centred services, engage the public in policy-making and respond to the public's views. Seen in this light, New Labour policy draws from radical democratic discourse. However, local authority staff are also expected to act in accordance with the direction set by their line managers, the Council and the government and to inform, engage and persuade the public of the benefit of their authority's policies. In this respect, New Labour policy draws from the discursive model of civil society, conceptualising public participation as a method for engendering civil ownership of the formal structures of representative democracy. Tension is likely to arise when the ideas, opinions and values of the local authority differ from those expressed by the participating public. This paper uses a local ‘public participation’ initiative to investigate how the tension is managed in practice. The study shows how decision-makers dealt with the tension by using participatory initiatives to supply information, understand the views of the public and encourage public support around pre-existing organisational agendas. Problems occurred when citizens introduced new agendas by breaking or manipulating the rules of participation. Decision-makers responded by using a number of distinctive methods for managing citizens’ agendas, some of which were accompanied by strategies for minimising the injury done to citizens’ motivations for further participation. The paper concludes that New Labour policy fails to deal with the tensions between the radical and discursive models of participation and in the final analysis draws mainly from the discursive model of participation. Furthermore, whilst New Labour policy promotes dialogue between the public and local authority, it does not empower local authority staff to achieve the goal of citizen-centred policy-making.

Keepsakes of the Revolution

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Michel Otayek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
North America ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Distribution Strategy ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines the literature produced by the CNT-FAI during the Spanish Civil War, with a focus on Estampas de la Revolución Española and ¿España? Un libro de imágenes sobre cuentos de miedo y calumnias fascistas. The author shows that the revolutionary narrative had the power to generate considerable media interest and mobilize public support beyond anarchist circles. However, the Foreign Propaganda Office failed to capitalize on the strengths of existing networks across the United States at a time of increased collaboration between Hispanic and non-Hispanic anarchist groups. As head of the Foreign Propaganda Office, Augustin Souchy developed and sought to carry out a propaganda production and distribution strategy that relied heavily on his links to anarchist networks across Europe, particularly in France and Sweden, while all but neglecting the renewed strength of the movement in North America.

The Philosophes and Religion: Intellectual Origins of the Dechristianization Movement in the French Revolution

1971 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A. Gliozzo
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Supreme Being ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

From Alphonse Aulard to Peter Gay historians have been fascinated with the attitudes of the philosophes toward religion.1 In the present essay attention falls on a neglected aspect of the question, the impact of the philosophes' ideas on the dechristianization movement in the French Revolution. Dechristianization means the attempt to suppress Christianity either by legislation or by force. In the Revolution, dechristianization took the following forms: aggressive anti-clericalism, prohibition of any Christian practice or worship either in public or private life, closing of the churches, the formation of a revolutionary calendar to replace the Christian one, and the establishment of new religious cults—the Cult of Reason and the Cult of Supreme Being. It is argued here that a direct influence can be traced from the philosophes to the dechristianizers of the Revolution. The dechristianizer did not belong to any clearly defined sociological group. He was an aristocrat like Anacharsis Cloots, or bourgeois such as Jacques René Hébert and Pierre Chaumette.2 Their ideas were nurtured from the deistic and atheistic writings of the philosophes.

The Revolution that Failed

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Rittenhouse Green
Keyword(s):  
The Revolution
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