All governments are really mixed in character; and what we call a democracy is only a more or less democratic government. Government, therefore, will always be to some extent in the hands of selected persons. Sovereignty, on the other hand, being the exercise of the general will, is in his view absolute and inalienable. Furthermore, for the same reason that sovereignty is inalienable, it is indivisible (it cannot be limited, abandoned, shared or destroyed), as the will is either general, or it is not. If it is general, it is, when declared, an act of the people and becomes law; if it is not general, it is, when declared, merely an act of a particular person or persons, not of the sovereign. Unless sovereignty is distinguished from government, the government, passing under the name of sovereign, will inevitably be regarded as absolute. .
Rousseau tries to establish a clear separation between the supreme power and the government by an adaptation of the doctrine of the "three powers," but instead of three independent powers sharing the supreme authority, he gives only two, and makes one of these wholly dependent on the other. He substitutes for the co-ordination of the legislative, the executive, and the judicial authorities, a system in which the legislative power, or Sovereign, is always supreme, the executive, or government, always secondary and derivative, and the judicial power merely a function of government. This division he makes, naturally, is one of will and power. The government's role is merely to carry out the decrees, or acts of will, of the Sovereign people. Just as the human will transfers a command to its members for execution, so the body politic may give its decisions force by setting up authority which, like the brain, may command its members. In delegating the power necessary for the execution of its will, it is abandoning none of its supreme authority, thus remaining Sovereign, and can at any moment recall the grants it has made.
