One, no one, and one hundred thousand: who are "the people" behind democracy?

• Grant number: 21/12771-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: March 15, 2022
• End date: September 02, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Eunice Ostrensky
• Grantee: Gabriela Rodrigues da Guia Rosa
• Supervisor: Andreas Kalyvas
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: New School for Social Research, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/02426-9 - One, no one, one thousand: who is the people founding democratic societies?, BP.DR

Abstract

What does it mean to claim that "the people" hold the constituent power in democracies of our times? By reflecting upon the connections between popular sovereignty and constituent power, this research aims at unfolding tensions featuring the two concepts and grasping the democratic but also the undemocratic consequences of such an association. To achieve these two goals the first working premise is that popular sovereignty refers to two different moments: the actual constituent moment and the process of exercising political power on democratic societies. While assessing the outreach of such a hiphotesys for contemporary political theorists, I argue it is possible to outline the different conceptions and debates regarding popular sovereignty as a form of constituent power. To frame conflicting theoretical arguments as debates, I follow Skinner (2002) and Palonen (1999, 2003, 2017) who suggest disputes over a concept are political forms of action in an always contingent context. Therefore, mapping these debates is also a strategy to investigate possible democratic and even undemocratic consequences of still setting "the people" as the final appeal for democratic legitimacy. (AU)