Beyond the People

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoran Oklopcic
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
The People ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The One ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
Point Of Departure

Who is ‘the people’? How does it exercise its power? When is the people entitled to exercise its rights? From where does that people derive its authority? What is the meaning of its self-government in a democratic constitutional order? For the most part, scholars approach these questions from their disciplinary perspectives, with the help of canonical texts, and in the context of ongoing theoretical debates. Beyond the People is a systematic and comprehensive, yet less disciplinarily disciplined study that confronts the same questions, texts, and debates in a new way. Its point of departure is simple and intuitive. A sovereign people is the work of a theoretical imagination, always shaped by the assumptions, aspirations, and anticipations of a particular theorist-imaginer. To look beyond the people is to confront them directly, by exploring the ways in which theorists script, stage, choreograph, record, and otherwise evoke the scenes, actors, actions, and events that permit us to speak intelligibly—and often enthusiastically—about the ideals of popular sovereignty, self-determination, constituent power, ultimate authority, sovereign equality, and collective self-government. What awaits beyond these ideals is a new set of images, and a different way to understand the perennial Who? What? Where? When? and How? questions—not as the suggestions about how best to understand these concepts, but rather as the oblique and increasingly costly ways of not asking the one we probably should: What, more specifically, do we need them for?

scholarly journals Rousseau, theorist of constituent power

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Colon-Rios
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
Careful Exploration ◽  
The One

© The Author 2016. Rousseau has always had an uncertain relationship with the theory of constituent power. On the one hand, his distrust of political representation and support for popular sovereignty seem consistent with the idea of the people as a legally unlimited constitution-maker. On the other hand, if, from those views about representation and sovereignty, it follows that Rousseau is a proponent of direct democracy, then there seems to be no place in his thought for a theory that presupposes, above all, a separation between those who exercise a delegated authority (eg legislators) and those who possess an original constitution-making power (the people). In a legal order in which all laws must be directly made by the people, such a separation is absent: the constituent and the legislative body are one and the same. It is therefore not surprising that Rousseau's name is largely absent from contemporary literature on constituent power. In this article, however, I will show that once Rousseau's particular conception of law, as well as his distinction between sovereignty and government, are properly understood, one finds in his work not only the first major formulation of the theory of constituent power, but also a careful exploration of its implications for actual constitutional practice.

scholarly journals Rousseau, theorist of constituent power

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Colon-Rios
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
Careful Exploration ◽  
The One

© The Author 2016. Rousseau has always had an uncertain relationship with the theory of constituent power. On the one hand, his distrust of political representation and support for popular sovereignty seem consistent with the idea of the people as a legally unlimited constitution-maker. On the other hand, if, from those views about representation and sovereignty, it follows that Rousseau is a proponent of direct democracy, then there seems to be no place in his thought for a theory that presupposes, above all, a separation between those who exercise a delegated authority (eg legislators) and those who possess an original constitution-making power (the people). In a legal order in which all laws must be directly made by the people, such a separation is absent: the constituent and the legislative body are one and the same. It is therefore not surprising that Rousseau's name is largely absent from contemporary literature on constituent power. In this article, however, I will show that once Rousseau's particular conception of law, as well as his distinction between sovereignty and government, are properly understood, one finds in his work not only the first major formulation of the theory of constituent power, but also a careful exploration of its implications for actual constitutional practice.

scholarly journals Rousseau, theorist of constituent power

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
JI Colón-Ríos
Keyword(s):  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
Careful Exploration ◽  
The One

© The Author 2016. Rousseau has always had an uncertain relationship with the theory of constituent power. On the one hand, his distrust of political representation and support for popular sovereignty seem consistent with the idea of the people as a legally unlimited constitution-maker. On the other hand, if, from those views about representation and sovereignty, it follows that Rousseau is a proponent of direct democracy, then there seems to be no place in his thought for a theory that presupposes, above all, a separation between those who exercise a delegated authority (eg legislators) and those who possess an original constitution-making power (the people). In a legal order in which all laws must be directly made by the people, such a separation is absent: the constituent and the legislative body are one and the same. It is therefore not surprising that Rousseau's name is largely absent from contemporary literature on constituent power. In this article, however, I will show that once Rousseau's particular conception of law, as well as his distinction between sovereignty and government, are properly understood, one finds in his work not only the first major formulation of the theory of constituent power, but also a careful exploration of its implications for actual constitutional practice.

A New Hope

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoran Oklopcic
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The People ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

As the final chapter of the book, Chapter 10 confronts the limits of an imagination that is constitutional and constituent, as well as (e)utopian—oriented towards concrete visions of a better life. In doing so, the chapter confronts the role of Square, Triangle, and Circle—which subtly affect the way we think about legal hierarchy, popular sovereignty, and collective self-government. Building on that discussion, the chapter confronts the relationship between circularity, transparency, and iconography of ‘paradoxical’ origins of democratic constitutions. These representations are part of a broader morphology of imaginative obstacles that stand in the way of a more expansive constituent imagination. The second part of the chapter focuses on the most important five—Anathema, Nebula, Utopia, Aporia, and Tabula—and closes with the discussion of Ernst Bloch’s ‘wishful images’ and the ways in which manifold ‘diagrams of hope and purpose’ beyond the people may help make them attractive again.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Politics and constitutional jurisgenesis: A cautionary note on political constitutionalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-111
Author(s):  
MING-SUNG KUO
Keyword(s):  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
Robust Version ◽  
Judicial Supremacy ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract:This article aims to provide an alternative account of political constitutionalism by situating it in a broader process of constitutional politics than the traditional court vs parliament debate has suggested. Drawing upon Robert Cover’s distinction between the jurispathic and the jurisgenerative constitution, I argue that parliamentary decision-making is not necessarily more congenial to a jurisgenerative constitutional order than judicial review as political constitutionalists contend. I trace the jurispathic character of current scholarship on political constitutionalism to the presupposition of institutional sovereignty in a narrow understanding of constitutional politics, which its defenders share in common with the supporters of judicial supremacy. To move towards a robust version of non-court-centred jurisgenerative constitutionalism, which I call constitutional jurisgenesis, we need to rethink the place of politics in a constitutional order. From Cover’s idea of constitutionalnomosI take two further lessons for this new understanding of constitutional politics. First, constitutional theory should reconsider the role of institutional sovereignty in the relationship between law and politics in constitutional orders. Second, to engage the people in constitutional politics, we need to shift attention from the popular sovereignty-centred debate to constitutional narratives, which are oriented towardsnomos-building.

scholarly journals Hyrdeliv og paradisdrøm. Om Grundtvigs syn på hyrder

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-141
Author(s):  
Inger Lise Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Contact ◽  
Only Children ◽  
Creative Power ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Jacob's Ladder ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Church

Pastoral Life and Paradise DreamBy Inger Lise MikkelsenIn »The World Chronicle«, 1814, Grundtvig writes that the people of poetry, the ancient Hebrews, were a race of shepherds. The shepherds are not tied to material things, but live a life in freedom. On the plains, tending his flock, the shepherd experiences everything that is alive and growing as images of God’s creative power. Thus, he intuitively perceives his position as a creature facing his Creator.With this basic view as a point of departure, Grundtvig rewrites the Biblical stories of the shepherds Abraham and Jacob, Moses and David. They are all in an immediate, intimate contact with God, but as they live at different times, God endows them with different abilities appropriate for their concrete historical situation. Abraham and Jacob are the shepherds of faith, Moses is the shepherd of fight and hope, and David is the shepherd of love. They are all models, not because they are heroes, but because they recognize their own fragility.In the church texts, the shepherds of Christmas night play a particularly important role. In the hymn .The Christmas Chimes are sounding now. (Det kimer nu til julefest) from 1817, it is a main thought that the singers must remember pastoral life and come along into the field to hear the angel’s message together with the shepherds. To people who have a sense of the miraculous as the shepherds do, the field at Bethlehem is the centre of interest. Today only children possess a genuine shepherd’s mind. The adult can learn from them. The essential thing is to learn how to regain the child’s mind.In connection with the child theme, as shown by Chr. Thodberg, Grundtvig develops, through the 1820s, his understanding of baptism as the occasion when the adult may re-enter the dreamland of his childhood. Here Grundtvig uses Jacob’s ladder as an image of the adult’s return to his hitherto forgottem baptism.Another theme that Grundtvig makes frequent use of is the dilapidated cottage of the shepherd, his hut. He uses it as an image of man’s heart, which to Grundtvig is God’s dwelling on earth. The hut and the ladder become recurring images in Grundtvig’s hymns.Frequently the two images supplement each other so that the shepherds and Bethlehem may now move into the church. It is no longer the field, but the heart that rings with the angels’ song. Here, in the shepherd’s hut, is raised Jacob’s ladder, which reminds the singer of the childhood life under God’s care.In Grundtvig’s eyes every Christian is therefore a shepherd like the patriarchs. But above all the one baptized is like the good shepherd himself, renewing the paradise life that God created man for.

The essence of democracy

1915 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilhelm Hasbach
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
The State ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Political Democracy ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
The People ◽  
European Science

Mr. W. J. Shepard, in a review of my work, Die moderne Demokratie, remarks that I have forgotten its spirit in the study of its forms. “It is not the vitalizing spirit,” he writes, “the impelling motive force, the broadly based popular sentiment of democracy that is of interest, but only the forms and mechanism ‥‥ of democratic-republican states.” Now I have in the fifth chapter of the second book presented the theory of political democracy, in the sixth that of social democracy, and in the seventh that of democratic socialism; and in the first of these three chapters I have discussed popular sovereignty and active citizenship, the supremacy of the majority in a democracy, the unlimited constituent power of the people (pouvoir constituant), in which European science has conceived the essence of this form of the state to reside in contradistinction to other forms. But Mr. Shepard has a different conception of its nature. He has raised an interesting question in this connection which I should like to discuss in the following pages.Brief though his statement on this point is, no one can doubt that he considers the supremacy of public opinion as the essence of democracy, since he writes: “No discussion of the nature, elements and effects of public opinion, no appreciation of the spirit of democracy is to be found in the covers of this volume.” As a matter of fact I have treated of this subject in the above-mentioned first division of the fifth chapter, which is devoted to the discussion of popular sovereignty, though certainly in the brief compass which appeared to me sufficient for the understanding of the nature of democracy.

North African Historiography and the Westerner: The Maghrib as Seen by David Gordon

1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 187-200
Author(s):  
Albert C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
African History ◽  
North African ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
The People ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third World

For the people of the Third World, nationhood in the twentieth century frequently demands the solution of a dual complexity: on the one hand, a search for an identity long suppressed by colonialism; and on the other hand, an effort to come to terms with the problems engendered by often violent entry into modernity. The challenge presented by this quest for self-identity and self-determination is at once paradoxical and parallel. Under foreign domination the colonized is denied his past, his real history; in addition he is forbidden any role in the making of his future. No wonder then that modern revolutionary movements stress the necessity for recovering the colonized's indigenous background — his roots — as a necessary corollary to independence and the eradication of colonialism.In a sense the student of history also shares in the problem. Particularly is this true of students in North African history for in the pursuit of knowledge about the Maghrib's past and present, where does one turn historiographically? For purposes of organization only, three prospective “schools” of historical analysis are considered here: colonialist, nationalist, and Western. In suggesting these three “schools,” I make no attempt to be inclusive; many other variations are possible. The model used here is presented simply as a guide to complement the discussion which follows.The aspiring historian may first seek truth in history as written by the colonialist. In most instances, however, this will prove inadequate because the colonizer usually relegates the pre-colonial past to obscurity; history under dynamic colonialism or protectionism is inevitably seen as forever enlightened whereas independence is chaotic and despotic, if the colonizer bothers to write about the reborn nation at all.

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