The Extension of Political Space and the Dimensions of Political Participation——Constant's Comparison of Ancient Liberty and Political Freedom in the Constitutional Representative System

In this paper,I argue that Constant's comparison of the two versions of liberty is far more complicated than what it is commonly understood:when Constant was distinguishing 'ancient liberty' from 'modern liberty',he also distinguished political liberty under the two political systems in ancient republics and constitutional representative democracy in modern times.Compared with the narrowness of political space and the singleness of dimension of political participation in ancient democracy, modern democracy not only offers more channels of participation,but also enables political liberty to have a negative function of limitation with respect of power in addition to the positive function in sharing the power,thus its political liberty can be combined with individual liberty and becomes its guarantee.