sfiscience

The French Revolution was one of the most important political transformations in history. Even today, more than 200 years later, it's held up as a model of democratic nation-building. But for years, historians and political scientists have wondered just how the democratic trailblazers of the French Revolution managed to pull off the creation of an entirely new kind of governance. New research from an interdisciplinary collaboration among historians, political scientists, and statisticians suggest that rhetorical innovations may have played a significant role in winning acceptance for the new principles of governance that built the French republic's foundation -- and inspired future democracies around the world. The study, published today in PNAS, used machine learning techniques to comb through transcripts of 40,000 speeches from the deliberations of the makeshift assembly formed during the revolution's early days to hash out the laws and institutions of the new government.