  One feature of Rousseau’s political philosophy that has proved least persuasive to later thinkers is his doctrine of sovereignty and representation, with his apparent rejection of “representative government”. At the center of Rousseau’s view in The Social Contract is his rejection of the Hobbesian idea that a people’s legislative will can be vested in some group or individual that then acts with their authority but rules over them. Instead, he takes the view that to hand over one’s general right of ruling oneself to another person or body constitutes a form a slavery, and that to recognize such an authority would amount to an abdication of moral agency. This hostility to the representation of sovereignty also extends to the election of representatives to sovereign assemblies, even where those representatives are subject to periodic re-election. Even in that case, the assembly would be legislating on a range of topics on which citizens have not deliberated. Laws passed by such assemblies would therefore bind citizens in terms that they have not themselves agreed upon. Not only does the representation of sovereignty constitute, for Rousseau, a surrender of moral agency, the widespread desire to be represented in the business of self-rule is a symptom of moral decline and the loss of virtue.