Constituent Power: A History

Ideas in Context

by Lucia Rubinelli

From the French Revolution onwards, constituent power has been a key concept for thinking about the principle of popular power, and how it should be realised through the state and its institutions. Tracing the history of constituent power across five key moments - the French Revolution, nineteenth-century French politics, the Weimar Republic, post-WWII constitutionalism, and political philosophy in the 1960s - Lucia Rubinelli reconstructs and examines the history of the principle. She argues that, at any given time, constituent power offered an alternative understanding of the power of the people to those offered by ideas of sovereignty. Constituent A History also examines how, in turn, these competing understandings of popular power resulted in different institutional structures and reflects on why contemporary political thought is so prone to conflating constituent power with sovereignty.

Genres: History, Politics

278 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 21, 2020

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very impressive work of scholarship, although not the most interesting. the author has done a significant service to the history of political and legal thought by unpacking the 'languages' of constituent power, from Sièyes to Arendt. Rubinelli works with multiple languages competently and draws some helpful conclusions.