SOURCE: Grofman, Bernard, and Scott L. Feld. “Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective.” American Political Science Review 82, no. 2 (June 1988): 567-76.

In the essay below, Grofman and Feld compare Condorcet's idea of collective judgment with Rousseau's idea of the general will.

Rousseau's seminal contributions to democratic theory are his views on the development of the social contract and his notion of the “general will.” Although the “general will” has been given various interpretations, there has been little understanding of how, in practice, political institutions might ascertain the general will for the purpose of effectuating public policy.

We illuminate the logic underlying Rousseau's notion of the general will by making use of long-neglected ideas of Rousseau's contemporary, Condorcet, especially those about the judgmental competence of individuals and groups. We also present some new results about the linkages between (individual and collective) preferences and (individual and collective) judgments about the nature...