Concept Of Popular Sovereignty Research Articles

Popular Sovereignty and Constitutional Conventions

This article provides an insight about the constitutional conventions and their connection with the concept of popular sovereignty. The author states that the constitutional conventions require a high degree of legitimacy in order to make institutional changes possible, and thereof constitute as a tool that can transform the institutional capacities of the State. On this regard, he defends the conception of democracy and argues that it is crucial to promote debate and impartiality, and to achieve decisions that will affect everyone’s interest. He starts by highlighting the importance of social struggles and its impact in constitutional reforms, arguing that they have a high potential of transforming particular social structures and entrenched injustices. He explains then the debate about mixing different constitutional visions by the importation-reception of institutions and jurisprudence from other countries, as well as the inherent value of these types of operations. Finally, he addresses the topic of pluralism and how constitutions should accommodate the claims of different groups and individuals; for this purpose he provides some detail about the historical responses considered by constitutionalism such as: synthesis, accumulation, inaction and imposition.

Understanding of the obligation in natural law concepts of John Locke and Jan-Jak Russo

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problems of obligations in the light of the natural legal concepts of John Locke and Jan-Jak Russo. Thus, within his theory of the social contract, John Locke notes about the natural state of people, from which the law of nature follows, is obligatory for everyone. Such the obligation comes from the human nature or from the harmony between natural law and the rational human nature. The reason for the formation of a civil society is to prevent a state of war, when force, not supported by law, is used contrary to natural law. Therefore, John Locke assigns obligations to the supreme authority, to which people entrusted a part of their freedom in order to fulfill the goals of the state - to ensure peace,security and welfare of the people.
 Thus, John Locke mainly considers the obligation through the prism of laws - first of all natural (not to cause harm to others), and later also civil, which is established by the supreme authority. The individual in the state is entrusted with the obligation to carry out the prescriptions determined by the government, while the government is supposed to ensure peace, protect property, and justly resolve (through judicial institutions) disputes between citizens. In this way, the freedom of individuals is guaranteed by the state, because real freedom, according to the thinker, is possible only in a legal state.
 On the example of the concept of Jan-Jak Russo’s social contract а certain feature can be traced. It is about a significant strengthening of the collective factor over the individual one, when a union of individuals who have mutual rights and obligations in relation to each other is formed in the manner of a corresponding contract. Obligation, therefore, is not only what binds a person, subjecting him to the supreme authority, but, above all, what serves as a factor of cooperation of people in a perfect union. Based on the concept of popular sovereignty, the principles of direct democracy, which the French thinker advocated, individuals should not just fulfill certain prescriptions, but also be called to be active participants in the state-legal reality, in particular, to participate in the creation of laws. Such laws, as the personification of the expressions of the general will, can ensure justice, equality and freedom of individuals.

The implicative relationship paradigm of democracy and constitutionalism: key values

The scientific article examines and analyzes the key values of the paradigm of the implicative relationship between democracy and constitutionalism.
 It has been determined that democracy is characterized by significant benefits not only on the national level, but also on an international scale, including the provision of sustainable economic development, the existence of various forms of ownership, the establishment of fundamental rights, interests and freedoms, their proper protection by reliable mechanisms, security guarantees, and the development of civil society.
 It is emphasized that the concepts of constitution and democracy have an implicative relationship within the framework of the doctrine of constitutionalism, which considers the constitution as a means of democracy by applying the formula "democracy through law". Such is the idea of the constitution which constitutionalism carries, and which makes it the doctrine of democracy.
 It was established that the key values of constitutionalism are: the actual functioning of the principle of the rule of law; separation of powers and the real existence of a mechanism of checks and balances that prevents the monopolization of power (since this division of powers is contained in the constitution itself, it becomes an effective tool for ensuring constitutionalism); responsible and accountable government that serves the people who elect it (if the government does not live up to the expectations of the electorate, the powers of such state and local government bodies are terminated by voting in democratic elections for more worthy elected officials for these positions); the concept of popular sovereignty, which assumes that state bodies derive their legitimacy from the people (even if there is a certain sovereign entity that is authorized to manage state affairs, the "ultimate" sovereignty belongs to the people, and the power of such a sovereign entity comes from the public); ensuring human and citizen rights and freedoms; the rights of the individual must be properly protected, then constitutionalism will flourish; the independence of the judiciary is the essence of any liberal democracy and the basis of a free society; the judiciary is the defender of the rule of law.
 It has been determined that democracy as a legal category and concept as a whole is subject to ambiguous interpretation and understanding by modern scientists in some aspects. At the same time, there are those aspects of democracy on which researchers are largely unanimous in their opinion. First of all, this is an assertion, which has actually become empty, that democracy has a close relationship with constitutionalism and its basic values, the concept of popular sovereignty, as well as state building.

Benjamin Constant, political power, and democracy

ABSTRACT For several decades now, a steady flow of scholarly contributions from both intellectual history and political theory has been reasserting Benjamin Constant as a theorist of liberal democracy. Constant’s visionary understanding of liberal democracy is usually conflated with his understanding of limited popular sovereignty. In this article, I reconstruct Constant’s positive conception of popular sovereignty, i.e. his conception of what popular sovereignty means within its limits and take it as the starting point of an analysis of Constant’s understanding of democracy. I argue that Constant’s understanding of popular sovereignty as ‘the assent of all’ leads to a distinction between ‘governmental authority’ and ‘sovereign power’. The latter is exercised by the individual members of the political community and has features that align with contemporary aggregative and contestatory approaches to democracy. Even though according to this analysis, Constant’s conception of democracy allows for both pluralism and dynamism, those are operative against the background of a more fundamental conservatism: Constant’s understanding of sovereign power is predicated on an institutional status quo.

Popular Sovereignty and Constitutional Referendum: Can “The People” be Limited by Human Rights?

AbstractThe rise of referendums has led to the concern that they could lead to liberticide and discriminatory results. This article intends to determine whether the concept of popular sovereignty would immunize constitutional provisions that are passed through a constitutional referendum from any human rights limitation. In answering the question, I formulate a theoretical framework called “constituent-constituted duality,” while also distinguishing “the constituent people,” which is mythical, and “the constituted people,” which is empiric. In the end, this article argues that the only possible form of limitation from the perspective of popular sovereignty is an ex ante limitation. Meanwhile, an ex post facto limitation remains unacceptable from the angle of popular sovereignty, which implies that a judicial review of popularly-enacted constitutional amendments is conceptually illegitimate.

Amerikan Aristocracy

Leftist political theory remains trapped between two dominant conceptions of sovereignty: the liberal conception of popular sovereignty and the decisionist conception of sovereignty as the power to declare a state of exception. This essay offers a historical critique of the liberal and decisionist conceptions of sovereignty and develops a descriptive theory of aristocratic sovereignty, which is more suited to the history and the needs of radical political theory and praxis. By tracing the genealogy of sovereignty through early modern European political thought to the founding of the United States, this essay reveals the debilitating shortcoming of notions of sovereignty derived from both Carl Schmitt and the liberal tradition and provides a basis for a distinctively radical analysis of the sovereign aristocracy in Amerika.

Ultimate Sovereignty and the Flexibility of the Islamic Caliphate/Democracy

Abstract March’s exceptional book profoundly deals with the ideas of popular sovereignty and the Caliphate in modern Islamic political thought. While this book covers the concept of popular sovereignty in quite detail, March’s portrayal fails to convince the reader whether or not Islamic democracies are possible as a result. Based on previous work on medieval Islamic political thought and public attitudes towards the Caliphate, I argue that conceptions of Islamic government have differed according to context, place and time, and in the modern era the public views the Caliphate as a vehicle for justice and welfare. This implies that Islamic government can still be broadly based on the principles of modern Islamic political thought while the exact institutional configurations may still be able to differ according to place, time and context. In conclusion, while March’s book carefully synthesizes the theoretical debates, it might not have far-reaching practical implications for Islamic democracy.

The Chinese Communist Party's Nervous System: Affective Governance from Mao to Xi

AbstractIn its one hundred years of existence, the Communist Party of China has experimented with how to connect its narratives of legitimacy to people's affects. In this essay, I trace the conceptualization of gratitude, from its repudiation in the Mao era as a vestige of feudalism and imperialism to its return in the reform era as a re-verticalization of Party sovereignty. The paper addresses four examples of gratitude work: Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Yang's short-lived critique of gratitude in the name of a different conception of popular sovereignty; the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake as a day of gratitude; the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang who are taught to be grateful to the Communist Party in a campaign of religious de-radicalization; and the refusal of gratitude in quarantined Wuhan during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these cases, the Communist Party's sovereignty stands at the threshold between bio- and necro-politics, promising life and salvation in the midst of death and destruction.

‘Nosotros, el pueblo’: apuntes sobre la evolución del concepto de soberanía en el constitucionalismo iberoamericano

La presente investigación se dirige a examinar la evolución del concepto de soberanía en la tradición constitucionalista iberoamericana, poniendo énfasis en el caso del constitucionalismo en algunos de sus países. A tal efecto se examinarán las tres principales influencias o antecedentes teóricos de la noción “soberanía” en la región; a saber, Bodin, Hobbes y Grocio. Posteriormente, a partir de una metodología basada en la dogmática jurídica, pero que recoge contribuciones de la teoría política y teoría del derecho, se analizará el rol de la soberanía en la pretensión de profundizar la democracia participativa que caracterizó a la última oleada de constituciones latinoamericanas. Uno de los principales resultados que arroja este trabajo consiste en revelar que el constitucionalismo iberoamericano descansa en una noción de soberanía popular que motiva el viraje desde una concepción de la democracia meramente representativa hacia una de corte participativo. Sin embargo, la falta de sólidas instituciones que aseguren la inclusión efectiva de todas las voces en el debate democrático, junto con un escaso rediseño de la organización del poder, habría diluido significativamente a las aspiraciones democráticas del constitucionalismo iberoamericano.

On the French Philosophy of History of the Restoration Period: Pierre-Simon Ballanche

The article analyzes Pierre-Simon Ballanche’s doctrine about the driving forces and directionality of history. The representative of early French Romanticism attached great importance to the feeling, which was understood as connecting element of wisdom, morality, and art. Feeling also inclines a person to religious faith, which should serve as a key to understanding of history. Distinguishing moral and intellectual aspects of human nature, Ballanche sees in their mutual mismatch the specificity of the modern stage of history. It is the gap between the moral and intellectual that explains the events of the French Revolution, considered by Ballance as the first significant anti-religious movement. Calling for reconciliation of all warring parties, he proposed to turn to ancient traditions. Ballanche divided history into three big stages. The first was the triumph of polytheism, the second was characterized by the spread of Christianity, the third will be marked by the liberation of thinking. These stages are interconnected, flow one into another, all the main discoveries of mankind retain their importance for them. At the heart of Ballanche’s theory of “social palingenesis,” there are ideas about the periodic revival, the restoration of society, the transformation of its dilapidated forms. But for him, morality, inseparable from religion, is always the core of the social organism. Society is constantly changing but never dying. Criticizing Enlightenment ideas, Ballanche rejected both the theory of social contract and the conception of popular sovereignty. He saw a political future in the prevalence of the principle of constitutional monarchy. He attached special importance to the doctrine of human solidarity, which he considered topical in the nearterm political prospects. In Ballanche’s theory, conservative elements are connected to the idea of progress, and his philosophy of history provides valuable evidence of the sentiments that were characteristic of French intellectual culture of the first decades of the 19th century.

Constant’s liberal theory of popular sovereignty

ABSTRACT In Principes de Politique (1815), Benjamin Constant offers a blueprint for later liberal attempts to retain a commitment to popular sovereignty, while moderating its absolutist tendencies and associations with arbitrary political power. This paper examines some notable tensions, still relevant today, in Constant’s domesticated liberal concept of popular sovereignty. These tensions, I contend, all point to the conclusion that Constant’s project of limiting popular sovereignty by appeal to a sacrosanct domain of rights rests on a liberal interpretation of the general will, which is in fact constitutive for the enjoyment of individual liberties. Section 2 argues that Constant’s location of popular sovereignty in the legislative general will, as determined by elected representatives, does not overcome the problem of the potential arrogation of the popular will by a partisan minority. Section 3 then examines Constant’s views on rights and the implications of his acknowledgement that the enjoyment of liberties depends upon the institutional guarantee provided by constitutional enactment. Finally, in section 4, I demonstrate that Constant’s valorization of individual self-development is inseparable from an idea of political liberty which reflects the priorities of a liberal elite.

‘In the vertigo of this freedom’: Democracy between procedural and divided popular sovereignty

The aim of this article is to investigate the Habermasian way of problematizing the European political situation through consideration of the conceptual framework within which he develops his proposal. I begin by clarifying various conceptual difficulties that emerge when thinking about politics within the European Union. I then focus on the concept of popular sovereignty as procedure, which Habermas develops in Between Facts and Norms against the historical backdrop of the nation state. In the debate regarding European constitutionalization, the concept of popular sovereignty as procedure first assumes a critical function (made possible owing to its desubstantializing effect) against proponents of the no demos thesis. More recently, Habermas has advanced a concept of shared/divided sovereignty, which becomes indispensable when we consider Europe as a democratic federation. The conclusions hereby drawn disclose two problematic aspects of Habermas’s recent proposal. Respectively, these concern the viability of his approach and the questionable plausibility of this proposed federation’s ability to uphold democracy in terms of self-determination.

“Popular Sovereignty that I Deny”: Benjamin Constant on Public Opinion, Political Legitimacy and Constitution Making

According to a dominant narrative, the concept of popular sovereignty was joined to the notion of public opinion during the French Revolution to form the blueprint of a liberal constitutional state. This article shows how, after the Revolution, Benjamin Constant, who is now recognized as a founding figure of “liberalism,” used public opinion as a substitute for popular sovereignty to theorize political legitimacy and constitution making. I show why and when Constant discussed popular sovereignty, namely to dismiss it as an unhelpful and dangerous fiction in answer to factions invoking the concept to revolutionize the political order, or rulers such as Napoleon using it to claim absolute power. In parallel, I explain how Constant designed his alternative, opinion-based theory of legitimacy in the 1790s, before pragmatically adapting it over the course of his career as political regimes changed in France. Constant's substitution of public opinion for popular sovereignty, I contend, reveals distinct views on what makes a political regime legitimate and the meaning of constitutional changes. I conclude with a discussion of how Constant's views, thus interpreted, throw light on debates about sovereignty and public opinion in modern political thought.

The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order by Nicolas Tackett

Reviewed by: The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order by Nicolas Tackett Charles Holcombe The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order by Nicolas Tackett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xix + 328. $105.00 cloth, $34.99 paper, $28.00 e-book. Nicolas Tackett has followed up his impressive first book, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy, with another admirably crafted volume, one that seems destined to attract even wider attention.1 Tackett is as adept with traditional approaches, such as translating [End Page 282] classical poetry, as he is with running large-scale computer database searches and analyzing the latest archaeological discoveries. He wields all of these methodologies together here in the service of a powerful thesis: that a Chinese national identity first crystallized during the long eleventh century of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). This claim might seem to contradict Naomi Standen's argument that personal ties of loyalty were more important than ethnocultural identity in determining allegiances in this era.2 But Standen's focus is on the tenth century, and she acknowledges that attitudes changed after the treaty of Chanyuan (or Shanyuan 澶淵) in 1005—although even in the eleventh century she still believes that "legitimacy rather than cultural identity" was the essential issue.3 In any case, Tackett's thesis, which is in line with Ge Zhaoguang's 葛兆光 (and others') influential vision of a "China consciousness" emerging in the Song, seems at least broadly persuasive.4 Tackett does not claim that fully modern-style nationalism existed already in Song times. There was, for example, no concept of popular sovereignty, no assumption that the entire world divides naturally into similar nation-states, and no proof that this sense of Chinese identity extended beyond educated elites to include the masses of the people. But Tackett does claim that the Northern Song presented a premodern variation of the modern phenomenon, as older assumptions of universal civilization were replaced by ideas of a state with clearly defined borders that was, furthermore, a transdynastic Zhongguo 中國 (central country) rather than a single dynasty, home to the Han 漢 people. "It was the notion … that ethnic, cultural, and political boundaries ought to align that justifies referring to the Song worldview as a form of 'nationalism'" (p. 7). Tackett convincingly demonstrates in his previous book that a small number of capital-based hereditary great families dominated the Tang dynasty (618–907) right up until they were sweepingly eliminated by Huang Chao's 黃巢 (d. 884) rebellion, after 880. In the present volume, Tackett explains that the old hereditary great families were then [End Page 283] replaced by examination-recruited new elites who were more evenly distributed across the entire empire. The celebrated Song-dynasty "economic revolution," a widely available common educational core, and the proliferation of written texts enabled by commercialized printing (to which Hilde De Weerdt would add the earliest appearance of maps depicting the normative shape of the empire in the twelfth century) all seem to tantalizingly foreshadow the emergence of something like the "print-capitalism" that Benedict Anderson famously emphasizes as underlying the origins of modern nationalism.5 Tackett especially highlights the peculiar situation of the sixteen prefectures in the northeast—under the control of the Liao empire (907–1125), with Khitan (Ch., Qidan 契丹) rulers—to make his claim for the rise of Northern Song national consciousness. This southward protrusion of the Liao empire onto China's Central Plain heartland contained an ethnic Han majority. In the years after the treaty of Chanyuan in 1005, a series of diplomatic exchanges between the Liao and Song empires took place. A remarkable number of top Song statesmen and literary figures were involved; their experiences—traveling across the part of the Liao empire that was located on the Central Plain, with a predominantly Han population, and then crossing the mountains north of what is today Beijing to enter fundamentally alien Inner Asia—awakened in these men an acute awareness of the difference between Han and non-Han and an expectation that all Han people properly belonged in a Han-ruled state (such as the...

Towards a Coherent Conception of Popular Sovereignty in the Irish Constitutional Order

This paper considers the ideal of popular sovereignty, and the means of its institutional realisation, in the Irish constitutional order. It identifies a tendency on the part of judges to associate the ideal almost exclusively with the referendum process, arguing that such an understanding is problematic both as a matter of interpretation of the text of the Constitution overall, and as a matter of normative political theory. The suggestion is that this tendency may be explained more by happenstance than by constitutional principle, however – although it may also have to do with an incongruous image of a “people” sharing a thick, value-laden identity that renders that “people” antecedent and superior to the Constitution. The paper argues that the basic features of the Irish Constitution imply a much broader account of the ideal of popular sovereignty as well as a more sophisticated set of institutional mechanisms through which it is to be realised in practice. It also argues for an understanding of the people as immanent within, rather than as antecedent to, the democratic constitutional system. Drawing on republican theory to elaborate that account of popular sovereignty, the paper suggests that something approximating to it might be emerging in recent jurisprudence. The paper is in four parts. Part I introduces popular sovereignty as it has been understood in Irish constitutional law and practice. Part II considers this broader account of popular sovereignty in political theory. Part III looks at relevant aspects of the constitutional text. Part IV turns to the Crotty v An Taoiseach and Pringle v Government of Ireland cases, identifying nascent shifts towards a judicial endorsement of this broader account of popular sovereignty.

A soberania popular revisitada: autogoverno como modo de vida

O conceito de soberania popular de Rousseau está vinculado a uma ideia radical de liberdade como autonomia: é livre aquele capaz de governar a si mesmo, não se submetendo à vontade de um outro. O presente artigo procura investigar o enraizamento social da autonomia não apenas como critério crítico de legitimidade política, mas tendo em vista compreender de que maneira ele se insere em contextos de ação da vida cotidiana da sociedade. Formas atuais de dominação social e novas gramáticas de lutas emancipatórias (em pautas ligadas ao feminismo radical ou às questões do antirracismo) mostram que a autonomia também precisa encontrar efetividade em dimensões sociais complementares à esfera pública política.

<b>Rousseau e a corrupção: é possível desconstruí-la?

Não há Estado sem os indivíduos. Para Rousseau, a construção do Estado requer a participação direta dos cidadãos. A participação ativa dos cidadãos resultará na expressão da vontade geral. É a vontade geral que, via pacto social, dará vida e união ao Estado. O Estado é um projeto de corpo político. A participação ativa dos cidadãos com vistas a impedir a corrupção e a dissolução da sociedade remete à concepção da soberania popular. Nessa modalidade de soberania, os cidadãos seriam capazes de construir e manter os fundamentos da sociedade civil. Rousseau, como um contratualista, pensa a sua época e as soluções políticas para os problemas reais de seu tempo. Portanto, é desse cenário entre a teoria e a prática, que Rousseau partirá para configurar a distinção e a relação desse importante tripé: soberano, Legislador e príncipe.

Liberty versus popular sovereignty. Constant’s understandig of the „ideas of 1789“ and obstacles in their affirmation

In the article the author is dealing with Benjamin de Constant’s assumptions that the core “idea of 1789“ was „reasonable liberty“, that there was a „natural tendency“ of the French people at that time to demand such liberty and that it was later, in the course of revolutionary struggles, suppressed by the usurpators of the popular sovereignty. As a matter of fact, Constant believed that the whole concept of popular sovereignty, invented by the most radical revolutionary leaders, had no other purpose but to enable the creation of new despotism, adapted to new democratic circumstances. Such sharp opposition between liberty and popular sovereignty, as well as the elevation of liberty in the almost one and only „idea of 1789“, seem to be a great oversimplification that prevented Constant in grasping the true nature of permanent nationalistic undercurrents in French revolution. However, his endeavors in advocating the reconciliation of individual and political liberties proved that he also had better insights in the dilemmas of emancipation, the French people were faced with right from the start of revolution.

Desconstruir a corrupção: o papel do Legislador, príncipe e soberano. A análise do caso no pensamento de Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There is no state without subjects. For Rousseau state-building requires the direct participation of citizens. The active participation of citizens will result in the expression of the general will. It is the general will that via social pact, give life and unity to the state. The state is a political body design. The active participation of citizens in order to prevent corruption and dissolution of the company refers to the conception of popular sovereignty. In this mode of sovereignty, citizens would be able to build and maintain the foundations of civil society. Rousseau, as a contractualist, thinks his time and political solutions to the real problems of his time. So it is this scenario between theory and practice, which Rousseau will start to set up the distinction and the relationship of this important tripod: Sovereign, Legislator and Prince.

Power in sovereignty and its self-legitimation: on the autopoietic semantics and contingency of popular sovereignty

AbstractThis paper analyses sovereignty as part of multiple power operations and the self-referential semantics of positive law and politics regarding the concept of popular sovereignty. The interplay between power structures and the self-description of society as democratic polity with popular sovereignty reflects on the typically modern tension between democracy as a contingent form of government and democracy as an imagined stable form of social totality. Using autopoietic social systems theory, the author reformulates the concept of sovereignty as the specific semantics internally constructed by the functionally differentiated systems of politics and law beyond the image of Leviathan and its socially integrating force, and independently of state organisation and its limitations.