Synopses & Reviews
Democracy is usually conceived as based on self-rule or rule by the people, and it is this which is taken to ground the legitimacy of the democratic form of government. But who constitutes the people? Democratic political theory has a potentially fatal weakness at its core unless it can answer this question satisfactorily. In The Time of Popular Sovereignty, Paulina Ochoa Espejo examines the problems the concept of the people raises for liberal democratic theory, constitutional theory, and critical theory. She argues that to solve these problems, the people cannot be conceived as simply a collection of individuals. Rather, the people should be seen as a series of events, an ongoing process unfolding in time. She then offers a new theory of democratic peoplehood, laying the foundations for a new theory of democratic legitimacy.
About the Author
Paulina Ochoa Espejo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
Table of Contents
ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The Time of the People
1. The Mob and the People in Mexico: A Historical Example of the Indeterminacy of Popular Unification
2. A Problem in Liberal Democratic Theory: The Indeterminacy of Popular Unification
3. Mechanical and Teleological Conceptions of the People
4. Dynamic Constitutionalism and Historical Time
5. The People Between Change and Stability
6. Creative Freedom and the People as Process
7. A Democratic People as Process
Conclusion: Radical Realism
Bibliography
Index