Alchemising peoplehood
Rousseau’s lawgiver as a model of constituent power
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11345656 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eoin Daly (0000-0001-5252-2386, School of Law, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 8 |
| Pages | 1278-1291 |
| Publication date | 2021-11-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of European Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01916599.2021.1898435 |
| OpenAlex | W3137341782 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 20 |
Because Rousseau identifies popular sovereignty with the enactment of fundamental laws, he seems to conflate popular sovereignty with constituent power: the people are sovereign because they constitute the state, without actually ruling it. However, he assigns the lawgiver, or (‘legislator’) an antecedent task that has a more obviously ‘constituent’ character – the task of constituting the people itself, as a political subject and political unity. Thus Rousseau’s lawgiver offers a template for understanding the relationship between popular sovereignty and constituent power. Accordingly, I make three arguments concerning the ‘constituent’ role of the lawgiver. Firstly, I argue that Rousseau’s lawgiver belongs within a ‘realist’ tradition of constituent power, which understands the people not as the bearer of constituent power, but as its product. Secondly, since the lawgiver’s task is to alchemise peoplehood by bequeathing the people a ritual life, this helps us understand how constituent power remains ‘live’ within the social life of the republic. And thirdly, since the lawgiver effects a rupture in political time of which Rousseau judges the people itself incapable, its role is to compensate not only for the people’s incapacity to reason, but more importantly, its incapacity to act
Legislation · Legislator · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Power (physics · Sociology · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Law · Political Theory and Influence · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity
The Human Condition
Ritual and Symbolic Power in Rousseau’s Constitutional Thought
Sieyès and republican liberty
Hobbes, Rousseau and the Modern Conception of the State
The Legitimacy of the People
Philosophy and Democracy
The concept of constituent power
Machiavelli and constituent power
How to think beyond sovereignty
Summoning Sovereignty
Rousseau on the People as Legislative Gatekeepers, Not Framers
Rousseau's Anti-Agenda-Setting Agenda and Contemporary Democratic Theory
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |