Learn Hardcore French: Dans une bonne démocratie, chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne peut exprimer ses idées librement. - In a good democracy, every male and female citizen can express their ideas freely.

dans une bonne démocratie literally means “in a good democracy (type of political system)”.
- dans
  - une
    - noun = you’re imagining a specific kind or model of democracy, even if it’s abstract.
en démocratie is more general: “in (a) democracy / under democratic rule”, without focusing on a particular “good” or “bad” one.

You normally don’t say en une bonne démocratie; en with an indefinite article (une, un) here sounds wrong. With en, you’d say:

en démocratie,
en dictature,
en république,
to talk about a type of political regime in a very general way.

Because the sentence qualifies the regime as bonne, French naturally switches to dans une bonne démocratie.

Why is it “chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne” instead of just “chaque citoyen” or “tous les citoyens”?

French nouns are gendered, and citoyen is masculine while citoyenne is feminine.

Traditional grammar would usually just say chaque citoyen (masculine) and treat it as “generic”: each citizen (male or female).
Modern, inclusive or gender-sensitive writing often explicitly names both genders:
- chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne
  to make sure women are clearly included.

You could also say:

tous les citoyens = all (the) citizens (more collective, less “one by one”)
chaque citoyen = each citizen (insists on the individual).

The given sentence uses “chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne” to:

Emphasize individual rights,
Use inclusive language (mentioning male and female forms).

If there are two subjects (chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne), why is the verb singular: “peut” and not “peuvent”?

This comes from the word chaque (“each”).

In French, chaque is always followed by a singular noun and is grammatically singular, even when you list more than one category:

Chaque homme et chaque femme a des droits.
Chaque élève et chaque professeur doit signer.

So:

chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne is understood as:
- “each (male) citizen and each (female) citizen, taken individually”.
Therefore, the verb agrees with chaque:
→ chaque … peut (singular), not peuvent.

If you wanted a plural verb, you would avoid chaque and say, for example:

Tous les citoyens et toutes les citoyennes peuvent exprimer leurs idées librement.

Why is it “ses idées” and not “leurs idées” or “son idée”?

A few different points here:

Why not “leurs idées”?
- leurs is used when the grammatical subject is plural:
  - Les citoyens peuvent exprimer leurs idées.
- In the original sentence, the grammatical subject is chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne, which is treated as singular (see the previous answer), so you must use the singular possessor form: son / sa / ses, not leur / leurs.
Why “ses” and not “son” / “sa”?
In French, the choice between son / sa / ses depends on the thing owned, not on the owner:
- son
  - singular masculine noun
- sa
  - singular feminine noun
- ses
  - plural noun (any gender)
Here, the noun idées is plural, so you must use ses:
- ses idées = his ideas / her ideas / their ideas (each person’s ideas).
Why not “son idée”?
That would mean “each citizen can express his/her single idea”, which changes the meaning. The original wants to say that each citizen can express all of their ideas, so it uses the plural: ses idées.

Does “ses” mean “his”, “her”, or “their” here? How do we know?

French possessive adjectives don’t show the gender of the owner; they show the number and gender of the thing possessed.

ses simply means “[someone’s] plural things”. It could be:
- his ideas,
- her ideas,
- their ideas (talking about one person with they/them), depending on context.

Here, the owner is chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne:

So in English we would naturally say “each citizen can express their ideas freely” (singular they),
In French, you can’t show that nuance in the possessive itself: ses just means that citizen’s ideas, regardless of whether the citizen is male or female.

Why is it “exprimer” and not “dire”? What’s the difference?

Both exprimer and dire can relate to speech, but they don’t have exactly the same nuance:

dire = to say, to tell (focus on the spoken act; very general)
- dire quelque chose = to say something
- dire la vérité = to tell the truth
exprimer = to express, to articulate, to make something outwardly visible or audible
It’s used with:
- des idées (ideas)
- des opinions (opinions)
- des sentiments / des émotions (feelings, emotions)

So exprimer ses idées means:

to give form to one’s thoughts, to make them known publicly and clearly.

In a political / rights context (democracy, freedom of speech), exprimer ses idées is the most natural collocation.
Dire ses idées is grammatically possible but stylistically weaker and less idiomatic.

Why is it “librement” and not “libre” or “en liberté”?

librement is an adverb; it describes how the action is done.

libre is an adjective:
- un citoyen libre = a free citizen
  You can’t usually use an adjective directly to modify a verb.
To modify a verb in French, you generally need an adverb, often formed with -ment:
- libre → librement (freely)
- rapide → rapidement (quickly)
- clair → clairement (clearly)

So:

exprimer ses idées librement = to express one’s ideas freely.

You could rephrase with a prepositional phrase like:

exprimer ses idées en toute liberté = express one’s ideas in complete freedom,
but you would not say exprimer ses idées libre.

Can we change the word order and say “peut librement exprimer ses idées”? Is that correct?

Yes, that’s also correct.

French allows some flexibility in adverb placement:

peut exprimer ses idées librement
peut librement exprimer ses idées

Both are grammatical and natural. The differences are very slight:

peut exprimer ses idées librement is perhaps the most neutral.
peut librement exprimer ses idées puts a tiny bit more emphasis on librement (you almost “hear” the freedom earlier in the sentence).

In normal speech and writing, both options are fine.

Why is it “chaque” and not “tout” as in “tout citoyen”? What’s the nuance?

Both chaque and tout can translate as “every / each / all”, but they’re used differently:

chaque
- singular noun:
- Focuses on each individual separately.
- Always singular in form and agreement.
- Example: Chaque élève a un livre. = Each student has a book.
tout can appear as:
- tout citoyen (masc. sg.) / toute citoyenne (fem. sg.) = any citizen / every citizen (taken generically)
- tous les citoyens / toutes les citoyennes = all citizens

In your sentence, chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne emphasizes the individual right of every single person.
You could say:

Tout citoyen peut exprimer ses idées librement.
which is also correct, but sounds slightly more like a general rule (“any citizen may…”), whereas chaque highlights each one more strongly.

Why is there no article before citoyen and citoyenne (no un / une / le / la)?

Because the determiner chaque itself plays the role that an article would normally play.

In French, you don’t combine “chaque” with an article:

✅ chaque citoyen, chaque personne, chaque jour
❌ chaque le citoyen, chaque un citoyen

So the pattern is:

chaque
- singular noun, without another article:
  - chaque citoyen, not chaque le citoyen
  - chaque citoyenne, not chaque la citoyenne.

That’s why the sentence simply has:

chaque citoyen et chaque citoyenne.