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Positive discrimination is said to be opposed to the French republican and universalistic ideal. The article looks at the genealogy of this alleged incompatibility. The main arguments voiced against the implementation of preferential treatments in France (enterprise free zones, parity, priority education contracts at Sciences po) have usually been constructed on the basis of a mythical American model. However a republican tradition of positive discrimination does exist, although it has never been envisaged nor designated as such. Is this conceptual blindness the result of exchanges between liberal economic models and theories of political representation? The majority rule, formulated in the famous “paradox of Condorcet” is thus deprived of its constitutive dynamic: the acknowledgement of the minority dimension of any majority.