This structure is referred to as The Act of Association, which encompasses the main idea of Rousseau's social pact: "each of us contributes to the group his person and the powers which he wields as a person under the supreme direction of the general will each individual forming an indivisible part of the whole" (Book I: VI 181). Rousseau strongly accentuates a bias towards civil society and the strict construction of the formula and the functions of each of its parts. Book I terminates with a passage on property, in which Rousseau lays down rules and guidelines that label an individual as a shareholder (of some form of property, specifically, land). These property laws legitimize the "Right of "first occupancy"" which stresses, again, the power of the sovereign over its subjects. .
By strict enforcement of the guidelines that will allow land occupancy by an individual and/or individuals grouped together, even in cases where they divide the land amongst themselves, the sovereign holds precedence over the rights of its people. The sovereign is the real owner of the land, just as it is the equal and undivided voice of its citizens. In Book II, Rousseau will first explain the inalienable status of the sovereign, the body of people that are "the true foundation on which all Societies rest" and then the laws that help to maintain the loyalty of its subjects (Book I: V 179). .
Rousseau, in his second book of The Social Contract, creates a sharp division between the supreme power and the government, arguing that they are so clearly distinct that even a completely democratic government is not at the same time the Sovereign; its members are sovereign only in a different capacity and as a different corporate body, just as two different societies may exist for different purposes with exactly the same members. Pure democracy, however, as the government of the state by which all the people in every detail, is not, as Rousseau says, a possible human institution.
