Inherent Constraints on Constituent Power

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 795-818
Author(s):  
George Duke
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Conceptual Background ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Minimal Constraints ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract This article argues that recent attempts to domesticate the concept of constituent power by appeal to inherent liberal-democratic constraints on its exercise are untenable. The article first outlines the conceptual background and some of the underlying motivations for the inherent constraints thesis. It then critically examines two attempts to defend the inherent constraints thesis, by reference to liberal and democratic principles respectively. These attempts, I contend, rest on a conflation of strong and weak popular sovereignty and assumptions about political legitimacy that should be kept conceptually distinct from the theory of constituent power. Finally, the article argues that the inherent constraints thesis ultimately derives from a failure to attend to the ‘ideal’ or ‘central’ concept of the constitution. The conclusion to draw from these arguments is that while there may be some minimal constraints on constituent power, these will not be inherently liberal-democratic in nature.

Participatory constitution-making: Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-178
Author(s):  
Sujit Choudhry ◽  
Mark Tushnet
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Hypothetical Consent ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
Constitution Making

Abstract At least since the late eighteenth century, constitutions have been understood as emanations of the will of “the People,” as the ultimate expression of an inherent popular sovereignty. In the form of theories of constituent power, accounts of constitutional foundations blended notional or conceptual “descriptions” of the People, which anchored the political legitimacy of constitutional orders in the idea of hypothetical consent, with empirical claims that the nation’s actual people were represented in constitution-making processes through elected delegates and thereby were the authors of and gave consent to its fundamental law. As part of the third wave of democratization, there was an important shift in what popular participation consisted of—from indirect participation by elected representatives to direct, popular participation in the constitution-making process. As a matter of constitutional process, this led to the growing practice, and expectation, that major constitutional changes should be ratified through referenda.

Sovereignty, the Corporate Religious, and Jurisdictional/Political Pluralism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Public Authority ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Power Rule ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Principles Of Justice

We typically associate sovereignty with the modern state, and the coincidence of worldly powers of political rule, public authority, legitimacy, and jurisdiction with territorially delimited state authority. We are now also used to referencing liberal principles of justice, social-democratic ideals of fairness, republican conceptions of non-domination, and democratic ideas of popular sovereignty (democratic constitutionalism) for the standards that constitute, guide, limit, and legitimate the sovereign exercise of public power. This chapter addresses an important challenge to these principles: the re-emergence of theories and claims to jurisdictional/political pluralism on behalf of non-state ‘nomos groups’ within well-established liberal democratic polities. The purpose of this chapter is to preserve the key achievements of democratic constitutionalism and apply them to every level on which public power, rule, and/or domination is exercised.

The possibility of democratic socialism in Habermas

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098689
Author(s):  
Pedro A. Teixeira
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Economic Regime ◽  
The Ideal

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy.

scholarly journals Political Theory of Populism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Urbinati
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Democratic Principles

Populism is the name of a global phenomenon whose definitional precariousness is proverbial. It resists generalizations and makes scholars of politics comparativist by necessity, as its language and content are imbued with the political culture of the society in which it arises. A rich body of socio-historical analyses allows us to situate populism within the global phenomenon called democracy, as its ideological core is nourished by the two main entities—the nation and the people—that have fleshed out popular sovereignty in the age of democratization. Populism consists in a transmutation of the democratic principles of the majority and the people in a way that is meant to celebrate one subset of the people as opposed to another, through a leader embodying it and an audience legitimizing it. This may make populism collide with constitutional democracy, even if its main tenets are embedded in the democratic universe of meanings and language. In this article, I illustrate the context-based character of populism and how its cyclical appearances reflect the forms of representative government. I review the main contemporary interpretations of the concept and argue that some basic agreement now exists on populism's rhetorical character and its strategy for achieving power in democratic societies. Finally, I sketch the main characteristics of populism in power and explain how it tends to transform the fundamentals of democracy: the people and the majority, elections, and representation.

Democratic Institutions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit Ganguly ◽  
William R. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Political Agitation ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Democratic Principles

This chapter looks at Indian democratic institutions. Contrary to popular belief, the British did little or nothing to promote the growth of democratic institutions in India. Instead, Indian nationalists from the late nineteenth century onward successfully appropriated liberal-democratic principles from the United Kingdom and infused them into the Indian political context. Under the influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi in the 1930s, these beliefs and principles were disseminated to a broad swath of India's population via the Indian National Congress, the leading nationalist political party. As this was occurring, the British colonial regime was losing few opportunities to thwart or at least contain the growth of democratic sentiment and practice in India. The Indian nationalists can justifiably claim that each step toward self-rule and democratic governance was the result of sustained and unrelenting political agitation against authoritarian colonial rule.

Islamic Democracy and Popular Sovereignty: A Critical Essay on Andrew March’s The Caliphate of Man

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-312
Author(s):  
Raja Bahlul
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Critical Essay ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Intellectual Revolution ◽  
Central Claim

Abstract In this review of Andrew March’s book, The Caliphate of Man, I shall focus on one central concept and one central claim to be found in the book: the concept of Islamic democracy, and the claim that al-Ghannūshī’s vision of popular sovereignty “reflects a genuine intellectual revolution in modern Islamic thought.” I suggest that the concept of Islamic democracy is logically possible only on the assumption of a purely procedural, value-neutral conception of democracy, and that the vision of the umma [the demos, populus] to be found in al-Ghannūshī is not such as to make the notion of popular sovereignty desirable by modern standards. I will suggest further that liberal Islamist thinkers stand to offer a superior view of Islamic democracy, one toward which al-Ghannūshī himself seems to be moving in his post-Revolutionary political practice.

The Power of the People

2020 ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Ari Hirvonen ◽  
Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Contemporary Theory ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Theoretical Idea ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Alain Badiou ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
The People ◽  
Jacques Rancière

In this chapter Hirvonen and Lindroos-Hovinheimo argue that the revolutionary power of constituent power and popular sovereignty are relevant conditions of radical emancipatory and egalitarian politics. How the people become the people – and what makes the people in its becoming – are relevant questions in modern democracy. The article considers the power of the people as a theoretical idea and political possibility. It brings together the older tradition of political philosophy with contemporary theory by discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas together with those of Jacques Rancière, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Alain Badiou.

Destituent Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

This chapter takes up the public narrative of ‘We, the multitude of Europe’, which suggests that the only hope for progressive change in the EU lies in a politics of disruption, and asks whether this idea can be defended based on a systematic model. To that end, it resorts to the political theory of destituent power, according to which opposition to or withdrawal from public authority can function as a legitimate trigger for constitutional change. Distinguishing between anti-juridical and juridical conceptions of destituent power, the chapter discusses to what extent the disruptive political strategies put forward by protest movements in the EU can be regarded as justifiable. Focusing on the juridical strand as the more plausible one, it argues that ideas of destituent power as ‘state civil disobedience’ run into a problem of authorization. By contrast, popular sovereignty-based approaches illuminate a neglected dimension of constituent power: the right to dismantle public authorities without the intention to create new ones. While such a model of destituent power in part captures the actions and demands of EU protest movements, it can only complement, not replace, the constructive side of constituent power.

scholarly journals The Strange Fruit of the Tree of Liberty: Lynch Law and Popular Sovereignty in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 819-834
Author(s):  
Michael Gorup
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right

Lynch mobs regularly called on the language of popular sovereignty in their efforts to authorize lynchings, arguing that, as representatives of the people, they retained the right to wield public violence against persons they deemed beyond the protections of due process. Despite political theorists’ renewed interest in popular sovereignty, scholars have not accounted for this sordid history in their genealogies of modern democracy and popular constituent power. I remedy this omission, arguing that spectacle lynchings—ones that occurred in front of large crowds, sometimes numbering in the thousands—operated as public rituals of racialized people-making. In the wake of Reconstruction, when the boundaries of the polity were deeply contested, spectacle lynchings played a constitutive role in affirming and circulating the notion that the sovereign people were white, and that African Americans were their social subordinates.

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