The Principle of Constituency of Peoples: An Obstacle to the Achievement of Popular Sovereignty in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Before the socio-political communities are posted, a very demanding task of defining the subject on whose name will behalf political power is implemented over a given state territory. However, the question about the subject of sovereignty should in no case be misunderstood as an issue of simply theoretical approach. The level of a state’s democracy, as well as its ability to realize internal and external sovereignty, depends entirely on fact: does the power belong to the People and whether it derives from the People. In other words, the issue of popular sovereignty is a substantial, constitutive element of modern democratic states. When we speak about contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, the functionality of the entire state government is often hindered by the complex decision-making processes at all state levels which lead to obstruction of the entire decision-making process. Such a dysfunctional decision-making process on the state level poses a threat and disables the Bosnian plural society to respond to the modern challenges of a democratic functioning state. The legal nature of Bosnian society is determined by the existence of constituent people who have “usurped” the entire decision-making process. There is still no end in sight to the struggle that leads to an oligarchy of the ruling elites; furthermore, there is still no appropriate socio-political mechanism that will enhance the accountability of the representatives to their voters; it is still inconceivable that decisions of state authorities are effectively and consistently implemented throughout the national territory. In other words, there is still no appropriate mechanism that will enhance the principle of popular sovereignty. It is necessary to “offer” Bosnia and Herzegovina’s pluralism and its political tradition a form of democratic authority which in no way should be a cliché. Furthermore, it may not be one of the “copy-paste” models of democratic authority. Currently, citizens of B&H are completely suspended (de facto, there are only citizens of entities). In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Serbs are suspended, while in the Republika Srpska, Bosniacs and Croats cannot equally participate in the decision-making process. An unfinished process of implementation of the Dayton Agreement and, in particular, Annex 4 (the Constitution of B&H), whose provisions permit discrimination against the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the impossibility of the realization of the principle of equality in the exercise of universal suffrage), as well as the non-application of the Decision of the European Court of Human Rights contributes and is conducive to further segmentation of Bosnian society.

Who, the people? Rethinking constituent power as praxis

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.

Religious Authority in a Democratic Society: Clergy and Citizen Evidence from a New Measure

A persistent concern for democratic theorists is the degree to which religious authority trumps democratic authority. This is often assessed using generic measures of religiosity or religious beliefs ill-suited to the task. Moreover, while religion is linked to dogmatism and authoritarianism, this begs the question how much influence religion has independent of psychological dispositions. We attempt to add to these debates with a new measure of religious authority. We draw on data gathered from three samples—a sample of Christian clergy from 2014, a national sample of 1,000 Americans from Spring 2016, and a national sample of 1,010 Protestants from 2019. We examine the distribution of the religious authority measure and then compare its effects of the measure in the context of authoritarian child-rearing values, deliberative values, and democratic norms. The results indicate religious authority values represent a distinct measurement of how people connect to religion in politically salient ways.

The Philanthropic Authority: What defines philanthropy and how it relates to democracy

A dangerous tool at the service of the richest or one of the most virtuous individual actions, philanthropy is said to stand in a conflictual relation to democracy. Many scholars have discussed the normative question of why philanthropy might or might not be desirable in a democracy. However, few have paused to address the prior and more fundamental analytical question of what makes philanthropy inherently specific in such a way that may (or may not) raise compatibility issues with the distinguishing features of democracy. I address this question as I offer a characterization of philanthropy as an act carrying a plutocratic and third-personal form of authority, which is in contrast with the mutual and second-personal kind of authority that distinguishes democracy as a form of government. The source of philanthropy’s authority rests in some people’s material resources that can be used to further unilateral decisions based on their individual preferences. This distinguishing feature of philanthropy makes it prima facie incompatible with the logic of democratic authority, which rests in the relations of mutual accountability between citizens as the joint makers of collective decisions. Philanthropy, I argue, inherently betrays this logic because it establishes no specific relation of mutual accountability between the donor and the recipient of the gift. To understand this specificity of philanthropy is important to gain a better understanding of the merits and limits of the different normative proposals to assess the desirability of making space for philanthropy in a democracy.

The Privatized State

Many governmental functions today — from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation — are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? This book argues that it cannot. It argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition — what philosophers centuries ago called “a state of nature.” Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, the book shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome — defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. The book advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, it presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The book shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter reflects on what has gone before. The idea that a democratic state’s reason for being is to authoritatively resolve disagreements among free and equal citizens over the demands of justice suggests that peace, not justice, is the first virtue of social institutions, including the institutions through which the state imposes punishment. It then ponders, in light of the actus reus and mens rea requirements, the legitimacy of state punishment as currently administered in the various jurisdictions of the United States. Judged only in terms of the actus reus and mens rea requirements, it seems those jurisdictions earn passing grades. Existing rules and doctrines, enacted in the exercise of democratic authority, appear to keep the state’s power to ascribe guilt largely within the bounds of legitimacy. One might nonetheless think those jurisdictions illegitimately criminalize forms of conduct they have no authority to criminalize, or that they illegitimately impose punishments so severe as to exceed their authority. These questions are left for others to address.

Rights

This chapter uses two well-known Supreme Court cases—Powell v. Texas and Morissette v. United States—to frame the subsequent discussion. It offers the reasonable doubt test as a way for each citizen to decide for himself if a proposed limit on democratic authority is a legitimate limit. It introduces formulations of the actus reus and mens rea meant to pass that test, such that they can serve as immunity rights limiting the authority of a democratic states to ascribe guilt to those accused of crimes. It distinguishes actus reus and mens rea as they are conventionally understood (as tools lawyers use to analyze and dissect the elements of criminal statute) from how they will be understood here (as immunity rights). It explains how actus reus and mens rea so understood mean one thing when applied to defendants who realized they were committing a crime and another thing when they didn’t realize they were committing a crime. It then details how mens rea is ultimately grounded in an ill or indifferent will—a lack of sufficient concern for the law and its ends—and proposes a test (the Jekyll test) for sorting ill and indifferent wills from law-abiding ones.

AN ESSAY ON STUDYING POWER AT THE INTERFACE OF POLITICS AND BIOLOGY

The article addresses the problem of Cartesian dualism, understood as an attempt to separate and interconnect «mind» and «body» and related to the idea of continuity between biological and social, as well as between animal and human. As an example of how complex research of human sociality can help us to find a «bridge» between «mind» and «body», and to highlight their interplay, we describe an experience of the biopolitical research and the reconceptualization of Political Authority. The results and outputs of the research can be put in use in the field of political science: «body»-verifications are giving us new arguments to support the traditional normative «mind»-theory of Democratic Authority, we can empirically clarify the terminology and concepts, and also bring on a template to research other classical «problems» of political philosophy, testing them with the new data.