Popular sovereignty and constitutional democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. e20210048
Author(s):  
Philip Pettit
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Single Body ◽  
The People ◽  
Constitutional State

In recent times, the idea of popular sovereignty has figured prominently in the rhetoric of neo-populist thinkers and activists who argue that legal and political authority must be concentrated in one single body or individual elected by the people to act in its name. The thesis of this article is that, while the notion of popular sovereignty may seem to offer some support to the neo-populist image of democracy, it serves more persuasively to support the idea of a polycentric, constitutional democracy. The constitutional state can be polycentric and yet feature a sovereign. And if this constitutional state is democratic in the sense of distributing power relatively equally amongst individual citizens, thus empowering the people-several, then it will establish the people-corporate in the role of sovereign..

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.

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.

Laws, Liberties, and the Will of the People

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-177
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
Development Of Resistance ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Role Of Religion

From the 1560s, tensions between Protestant and Catholics escalated and this was accompanied by a wave of writing on political and religious ideas, especially in France and the Netherlands. There was a renewed interest in the nature and origins of authority within the political sphere, particularly the importance of the ‘people’ and the ways in which their will could be both represented and controlled. This chapter considers some of the key texts of resistance theory written in the 1560s and 1570s, including Francogallia and the Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos in France, and George Buchanan’s De Jure Regni apud Scotos in Scotland. Discussions of liberty and privileges in the Netherlands during the Dutch Revolt are also considered; here historically based arguments began to be supplemented by appeals to wider principles of morality and natural law. The election of Henry of Valois to the Polish throne provides one example of elective monarchy in practice. This chapter discusses the role of religion and of legal arguments in the development of resistance theories. It also highlights some of the practical and conceptual difficulties in appealing to popular sovereignty, especially in a period of deep confessional divisions, and shows how the authority of magistrates could be understood in different ways.

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.

Education, Propaganda, and the People: Democratic paternalism in 1930s Siam

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1122-1142 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARJUN SUBRAHMANYAN
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Top Down ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The People ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Second Category

AbstractOn the morning of 24 June 1932 the ‘People's Party’, a small group of civil and military bureaucrats, toppled the Thai absolute monarchy and introduced constitutional democracy. This article discusses the establishment of democracy as an endeavour in ‘democratic paternalism,’ by which is meant the Party's attempt to establish a new moral and intellectual leadership that had as its main goal the creation of a depoliticized democratic citizenry. To implement their programme for democracy, the Party embarked on an ambitious plan to modernize education and explain popular sovereignty through countrywide lectures and radio programmes. The democratic paternalist effort had mixed results. State weakness limited the reach of the educational and propaganda campaigns, and further the ‘people’ in whose name the revolution was staged, constituted two different groups: a largely illiterate peasantry and a small, incipient new intelligentsia. Because of its limited capacity, the People's Party tasked the second group with assisting in democratic mentorship of the masses, but many in this second category of people had a broader conception of democracy than the Party's ‘top-down’ model and criticized the Party for its paternalist constraints on popular sovereignty. Democratic paternalism and frustration with the limits imposed on popular democracy are two central aspects of this period of history that have endured in Thai society.

Can Political Authority be Founded on a Ruse? Derrida and Lefort on Machiavelli’s Use of Political Deception

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peg Birmingham
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The People ◽  
Theological Foundation ◽  
The Law

The institution of Hobbes’ Leviathan is marked by the transformation of cunning, equally shared by all in the state of nature, into a rational, sovereign politics. The question I take up here by way of Machiavelli and two of his contemporary readers, Derrida and Lefort, what if cunning was politicized rather than replaced by sovereign reason? In other words, what if cunning, a complex political deception, was not abandoned or given over to the sovereign? I argue that Lefort’s reading of Machiavelli, embracing as it does the central role of a shared cunning or ruse between the people and the prince, offers valuable resources for thinking the foundation of political authority for a secular democratic politics, while in contrast, Derrida’s critique of Machiavelli’s cunning illuminates why he is not able to escape a sovereign, theological foundation for political authority and the law.

scholarly journals The Biblical Image of the Providential Ruler in the Protestant Propaganda on the Eve of the French Wars of Religion

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 596
Author(s):  
Andrei Constantin Sălăvăstru
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
The People ◽  
French Wars Of Religion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

French Protestantism has remained famous in the history of political thought mostly for its theories regarding popular sovereignty and the right of the people to resist and replace a tyrannical ruler. However, before the civil wars pushed them on this revolutionary path, French Protestants stressed the duty of obedience even in the face of manifest tyranny. The reasons for this were ideological, due to the significance placed on St. Paul’s assertion that all political power was divinely ordained, but also pragmatic, as Calvin and his followers were acutely aware of the danger of antagonizing the secular authorities. More importantly, they were fervently hoping for the conversion of France to the Reformation and, in their mind, the surest way such a process could take place was through the conversion of the king and the royal family. Therefore, Protestant propaganda of that time constantly urged the most important French royals to convert to the Reformation, and, for this purpose, they deployed a language full of references to the pious Biblical rulers who led their people towards the true faith—whom the addressees of these propaganda texts were advised to emulate, lest they incur God’s wrath. This paper aims to analyze the occurrences and the role of these references in the Protestants’ dialogue with the French monarchy.

Introduction Building Constitutionalism in Fragile Democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Yvonne Tew
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
State Building ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
Facilitative Role

What role do courts play in developing constitutional democracy in Asia? Constitutional Statecraft in Asian Courts explores the role of judicial review and constitutionalism in safeguarding democratic governance and facilitating constitutional governance. It offers an in-depth look at contemporary Malaysia and Singapore, helping us understand how courts engage in constitutional state-building even as they confront dominant political parties and negotiate democratic transitions. The book considers how the judiciary can negotiate institutional power to consolidate its position vis-à-vis the dominant political branches of government. It also examines the facilitative role courts can play in crafting the foundational principles of an evolving constitutional order. The judicial strategies evident in Malaysia and Singapore suit the challenges of many other emerging Asian democracies, providing both guidance and caution as these states negotiate their emerging constitutionalism. At the heart of this book is an account of how judicial strategies of constitutionalism can sculpt the contours of state-building. It is, in brief, about how courts engage in constitutional statecraft.

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