Constituent Power and Constitutive Exceptions: Carl Schmitt, Populism and the Consummation of Secularisation

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-214
Author(s):  
Jon Wittrock
Keyword(s):  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
Cultural Markers

This chapter considers the role of the people in Carl Schmitt’s theorizing on democracy, and invokes the concept of constitutive boundaries as a way of understanding how communities are reproduced by way of territorial borders as well as criteria for membership and cultural markers, e.g. symbols, rituals, and holidays. The chapter suggests that the latter constitute instances of a larger logical space of constitutive exceptions, that, Schmitt implies, reproduce existing orders, but also threaten to replace them with new ones; thus, such exceptions may be surrounded by protective boundaries of the sacred, concretely as well as abstractly. Ultimately, we may visualize an entire topology of the exceptional, which is subject to fierce contestation, since it points to the possibility of new orders beyond existing ones, which may be interpreted in terms of different trajectories of highly ambiguous processes of secularization.

scholarly journals Debatterende eller besluttende offentlighed? - Om demokrati, offentlighed og den konstituerende magt hos Carl Schmitt og Hannah Arendt

2018 ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
Hierarchical Relation

The article investigates Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt’s theory of the constituent power. By comparing Schmitt and Arendt’s notions of democracy, the people and the public sphere, the article seeks to establish an alternative to deliberative democracy’s conceptualisation of the relation between democracy and the public sphere. By pointing to the differences between the debating and legitimating public sphere inherent in deliberative democracy on the one hand and the lawgiving and constituting public sphere in the works of Schmitt and Arendt on the other, the article investigates Schmitt’s notion of plebiscitary democracy and Arendt’s idea of a federal republic of councils. These political modes of organizations attempt to overcome the hierarchical relation between representatives and represented and seek to envision the people as able, when gathered together in public, to give laws themselves, and not only play the role as electors or debaters.

Constituent Power

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People

Recent social and political developments, including the presidential elections in the United States, antidemocratic state policies in Hungary and Poland, and the political climate in the rest of Europe have brought questions relating to the position and composition of ‘the people’ in constitutional democracies to the forefront. This book confronts these questions head on as leading scholars across the fields of law, legal theory, political theory and history explore the contemporary problems facing constitutional democracies. With a strong focus on constitutional law, this book examines the legal as well as the political power of ‘the people’ in constitutional democracies. Bringing together an international range of contributors from the USA, Latin America, the UK and continental Europe, it explores the complex relationship between constitutional democracy and ‘the people’ from the angles of constitutional law, legal theory, political theory, and history. Contributors explore this relationship through the lens of radical democracy, engaging with the work of key figures such as Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort, and Jacques Rancière.

scholarly journals Ademia: Agamben and the Idea of the People

2019 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Gian Giacomo Fusco
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
The People ◽  
Ultimate Source

In the volume Stasis. Civil War as a Political Paradigm, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben advances the thesis that ademia – the absence of a people (a-demos) – is a constitutive element of the modern state. When confronted with the fact that modern political and juridical thought elevated the people to the role of the sole chief constituent agent and the ultimate source of the legitimacy of constituted orders, this thesis turns out to be rather problematic. In this work, I will explore Agamben’s notion of ademia, retracing the main lines of its theoretical development and reconsidering it in relation to different interpretations of the idea of the people. Most notably, I will demonstrate how Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Carl Schmitt in challenging the conundrums that the idea of the people inevitably entails ended up in revealing the ultimate absence of the people in the political space of the constituted order of the state. In doing so, I will try to show how Agamben’s notion of ademia is helpful is grasping some of the main paradoxes and conundrums underpinning the meaning and the uses of the idea of the people in legal and political thought.

scholarly journals Emergency Powers and Covid-19 in Thailand: Carl Schmitt’s Constitutional Emergency Model Reconsidered

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Rawin Leelapatana
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
The People

Carl Schmitt was an anti-liberal conservative jurist during the Weimar Republic in Germany whose position on emergency powers sponsors a hardline form of ‘realism’. To restore peace and order qua the homogeneity of the people in times of crises, he sponsors the role of the sovereign in deciding on an extreme emergency even by transgressing the wordings of a written constitution. However, this article seeks to use the case of the Thai government’s response to Covid-19 through the invocation of emergency powers to expose deficiencies pertaining to the Schmittian model. Rather than calling for the politics of exclusion, the present outbreak of Covid-19 in Thailand reiterates the essence of legality and communitarian and social solidarity.

Carl Schmitt’s Defense of Democracy

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Rasch
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
World War ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The People ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
Sovereign Authority

Carl Schmitt accommodated himself to the ascendency of democratic thinking in the post–World War I world of the 1920s. No sovereign authority, he argued, could fail to acknowledge “the people” as the constituent power of an established political order. Consequently, democracy and “the political” become synonymous in his Constitutional Theory (1928). To champion democracy, however, Schmitt emphasized the historical distinction between democracy, based on equality and homogeneity of the collective, and liberalism, which features the primacy of the private individual’s liberty. This chapter shows that key to understanding Schmitt’s defense of democracy against liberalism are his notions of representation, acclamation, and plebiscitary leadership, as well as a strong sense of the public persona of the citizen. The chapter argues that even though we shun his reading of democracy today, a full understanding of the liberal-democratic compromise that we now call democracy benefits from a close reading of Schmitt.

Public Narratives of Constituent Power in the European Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Not Given ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The People ◽  
Competing Ideas ◽  
The Eu

This chapter provides a mapping of public narratives of constituent power in the EU. In this way, it seeks to identify adequate starting points for an endeavour of practice-oriented theory construction. Citizens have started to challenge the role of the states as the ‘masters of the treaties’. Drawing on a vocabulary of popular sovereignty and self-government, they demand that the EU should be shaped by ‘the people’. Focusing on the voices of actors such as protest movements and public intellectuals, the chapter traces four public narratives that articulate competing ideas as to who should be in control of European integration, how the respective subject came to find itself in that position, and how it should take action in the future. Based on these stories, the chapter turns to the emerging normative debate about the EU’s constituent subject in order to determine which proposals in political theory are worth pursuing and which are not—given their anchoring in public discourse or lack thereof. In this way, it sets the stage for the construction and evaluation of models of constituent power in the EU in subsequent chapters.

scholarly journals Who, the people? Rethinking constituent power as praxis

2021 ◽  
pp. 019145372110175
Author(s):  
Maxim van Asseldonk
Keyword(s):  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic Authority ◽  
Just Decisions ◽  
Modern Thinking

Modern thinking about democracy is largely governed by the concept of constituent power. Some versions of the concept of constituent power, however, remain haunted by the spectre of totalitarianism. In this article, I outline an alternative view of the identity of the people whose constituent power generates democratic authority. Broadly speaking, constituent power signifies the idea that all political authority, including that of the constitution, must find its source in some idea of ‘the people’, whose authority is never exhausted by constituted power. The deficiency I seek to address is that of asking who the people is to whom any claim of authority refers, while avoiding the pitfalls of totalitarianism. I show the most famous totalitarian view of constituent power – advanced by Carl Schmitt – to be not only politically unsavoury but also ontologically unjustified. To outline my alternative view, I draw on Jacques Derrida’s concept of just decisions to argue that the undecidable inaugurates collective responsibility by demanding a response. This suggests a view of ‘the people’ as a doing rather than a being. I conclude by showing how this avoids totalitarian views of popular sovereignty by demonstrating its congruency with Claude Lefort’s democratic theory as opposed to totalitarianism.

Public Administration in the Islamic World: Considering the Importance of Religion, its Values and Culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Daniel Hummel
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Salient Region ◽  
The People ◽  
Comparative Public Administration

A small but growing area of public administration scholarship appreciates the influence of religious values on various aspects of government. This appreciation parallels a growing interest in comparative public administration and indigenized forms of government which recognizes the role of culture in different approaches to government. This article is at the crossroads of these two trends while also considering a very salient region, the Islamic world. The Islamic world is uniquely religious, which makes this discussion even more relevant, as the nations that represent them strive towards legitimacy and stability. The history and core values of Islam need to be considered as they pertain to systems of government that are widely accepted by the people. In essence, this is being done in many countries across the Islamic world, providing fertile grounds for public administration research from a comparative perspective. This paper explores these possibilities for future research on this topic.

Analisis Pengembalian Kredit Terhadap Profitabilitas Pada PT Bank Sumut Cabang Gunungsitoli

Owner ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 160
Author(s):  
Victorinus Laoli
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Business Continuity ◽  
Working Capital ◽  
The People ◽  
Data Collection Technique

One manifestation of the important role of banking in a region, as implemented by PT Bank Sumut, Gunungsitoli Branch, is to distribute loans for investment, consumption and working capital for the people in the area. The purpose of providing credit for banks is the return of credit that earns interest and can increase income to finance activities and business continuity. From the results of research conducted with this data collection technique, it shows that PT Bank Sumut has a number of loans from 2009 to 2014 which each year rises. From this study, it is also known that the rate of credit repayment has a positive influence on the level of profitability.

INTERPRETATION OF SINO-RUSSIAN CULTURE AND HUMANITIES COOPERATION IN THE NEW ERA

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-193
Author(s):  
REN YANYAN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Current Status ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
New Era ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
The People ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cooperative Partnership ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Belt And Road

The friendship between nations lies in the mutual affinity of the people, and the people’s affinity lies in the communion of hearts. The cultural and humanities cooperation between China and Russia has a long history. In recent years, under the role of the“Belt and Road” initiative, the SCO, and the Sino-Russian Humanities Cooperation Committee, Sino-Russian culture and humanities cooperation has continued to deepen. Entering a new era, taking the opportunity to promote Sino-Russian relations into a “new era China-Russia comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership”, the development of human relations between the two countries has entered a new historical starting point, while also facing a series of problems and challenges. This article is based on the current status of Sino-Russian human relations in the new era, interprets the characteristics of Sino-Russian human relations in the new era, analyzes the problems and challenges of Sino-Russian human relations in the new era, and tries to propose solutions and solutions with a view to further developing Sino-Russian cultural and humanities relations in the new era. It is a useful reference, and provides a reference for future related research, and ultimately helps the Sino-Russian cultural and humanities relations in the new era to be stable and far-reaching.

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