Written by: Fanny Schobert3 min readNov 2, 2026 06:24 AM IST First published on: Nov 2, 2026 at 06:24 AM ISTA young man sits on a balustrade beside Montpellier’s tramway tracks. The trams are not running. Police officers are deployed across the city centre, and the afternoon’s demonstration has been banned. Still, he has come to protest. He invokes Article 35 of France’s 1793 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which described insurrection against a government violating the people’s rights as both a right and a duty. The Declaration has no constitutional force today. But he is drawing on France’s revolutionary tradition to question the relationship between citizens and political authority.The protests began in September with secondary-school students demanding more teachers, better facilities and greater educational resources. Their grievances concerned classroom conditions but also the opportunities education is supposed to provide. As teachers, parents and other citizens joined the protests, the debate widened. Among demonstrators, concerns ranged from wages, pensions and healthcare to purchasing power, environmental protection and discrimination. For those under 35, conversations revealed anxiety about what lies ahead.AdvertisementSome doubted their earnings would ever provide stability, while others wondered whether the pensions they were paying would exist when they retired. Several struggled to picture their lives five years from now. These accounts suggest a concern deeper than immediate hardship: The fear that institutions can no longer deliver what citizens have come to expect of them.In The Social Contract (1762), Jean-Jacques Rousseau asked what makes political authority legitimate. His answer centred on popular sovereignty, not a guarantee of prosperity. France’s later development of public education and social protection nevertheless gave practical weight to an expectation of collective responsibility: Citizens contribute to society and expect institutions to protect their rights and provide essential services. Economic insecurity alone does not amount to a crisis of political legitimacy. But when dissatisfaction is accompanied by a belief that representatives do not respond, the question shifts from what the government delivers to whom it answers.On October 24, the dispute acquired another dimension. Following violence at the previous weekend’s protest, Hérault’s prefect banned the planned demonstration on public-order grounds. Public transport was suspended and police deployed across central Montpellier. Demonstrators gathered nonetheless. Authorities have a duty to protect public safety, but peaceful assembly is also a protected freedom. For those who opposed the ban, the conditions under which they could express their demands had themselves become contentious. One placard read: “I was afraid to come. That is why I am here.” Another declared: “When demonstrating is no longer a right, it becomes a duty.”AdvertisementThe young man citing 1793 thus embodied a shift: A protest about public services and economic security had become, partly, a protest about the right to protest. Indeed, a democracy is tested not only by how it exercises power, but by how it responds when that power is questioned.The writer is a project manager based in Montpellier, France