Book contents
- Sovereignty in Action
- Sovereignty in Action
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Theory in History
- Part II History of Theory
- 5 Liberal Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism
- 6 Popular Sovereignty
- 7 Nations against the People
- 8 A Positive or Negative Conception of Sovereignty? Marcel Gauchet, Benjamin Constant and Liberal Democracy
- 9 Political Idolatry
- Index
6 - Popular Sovereignty
The People’s Two Bodies
from Part II - History of Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2019
- Sovereignty in Action
- Sovereignty in Action
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Theory in History
- Part II History of Theory
- 5 Liberal Governmentality and the Political Theology of Constitutionalism
- 6 Popular Sovereignty
- 7 Nations against the People
- 8 A Positive or Negative Conception of Sovereignty? Marcel Gauchet, Benjamin Constant and Liberal Democracy
- 9 Political Idolatry
- Index
Summary
The following chapter has two main sections that partially overlap. Perhaps they just convey the same idea in two different ways. In the first section I present a conceptual analysis of the terms people, sovereignty, and popular sovereignty to reach the conclusion that in a constitutional democracy sovereignty, and so political authority, is divided and shared among different state organs, contrary to Rousseau’s conception, and that the “people” – the voters – are only one of the constituted powers. In the second section, I argue that the concept of popular sovereignty as constituent power of the people, rather than transposing onto the subject “people” the idea of absolute power of a monocratic institution (the Kingship), is instead the foundational principle of the framework of limited power typical of the contemporary constitutional state. The “people,” I therefore conclude, have to be understood as occupying a vital double role within our constitutional imaginary – supplying both the constituent power and a constituted power.
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- Sovereignty in Action , pp. 144 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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