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²⁵ Whelan, “Prologue,” 16.

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²⁸ Olson, “Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy,” 331.

²⁹ Honig, “Between Decision and Deliberation”; Mouffe, Chantal, The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2004)Google Scholar; Näsström, “Legitimacy of the People.”

³⁰ Waldron, Law and Disagreement, 164–87.

³¹ Ibid., 111–16, 282–312.

³² Ibid., 232–54.

³³ Ibid., 298–300.

³⁴ Ibid., 299–300, emphasis added.

³⁵ Ibid., 300.

³⁶ Ibid., 283.

³⁷ Ibid., 88–118.

³⁸ Ibid., 282.

³⁹ Agné, “Why Democracy Must Be Global.”

⁴⁰ Näsström, “Challenge of the All-Affected Principle,” 129.

⁴¹ Dahl, Robert, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁴² Lopez-Guerra, Democracy and Disenfranchisement, 68–69.

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⁴⁶ Honig, “Between Decision and Deliberation,” 13.

⁴⁷ Näsström, “Legitimacy of the People,” 644.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 626, 642.

⁴⁹ Donahue and Ochoa Espejo, “Analytical-Continental Divide,” 151. Mouffe's approach (to which Donahue and Ochoa Espejo also refer) to the problem of the demos is in a sense an “impossibilist” position because she does not think a legitimate demarcation of the demos is achievable. However, it is important to see that Mouffe does not base this claim on the idea that any demarcation of the demos necessarily leads to the paradox of the demos as we described it in the introduction. Instead, she argues that the question of the demos's composition can never be legitimately closed because there is a tension between the individualistic universalism of liberalism and the excluding particularism inherent to democratic practice. She argues that this tension is intractable for liberal democratic theory. Mouffe clearly does not adopt the strongly procedural theory of democratic legitimacy that some impossibilists endorse. Rather she recognizes that procedural justice and democratic procedures “presupposes acceptance of certain values” (Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, 68–69). Given her normative commitments, what is surprising in Mouffe's case is how little theoretical progress she thinks can be made on the problem of the legitimate composition of the demos.

⁵⁰ Ochoa Espejo, Time of Popular Sovereignty, 174.

⁵¹ Ibid., 177.

⁵² Ibid., 178.

⁵³ A similar critique of paradox in democratic theory and a call for a problem-based approach to democratic problems, based on a normative understanding of democracy, is defended in Warren, Mark E., “A Problem-Based Approach to Democratic Theory,” American Political Science Review 111 (2017): 39–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.