Popular sovereignty

About: Popular sovereignty is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2023 publications have been published within this topic receiving 32121 citations.

A preface to democratic theory

Abstract: Robert Dahl s "Preface "helped launch democratic theory fifty years ago as a new area of study in political science, and it remains the standard introduction to the field. Exploring problems that had been left unsolved by traditional thought on democracy, Dahl here examines two influential models the Madisonian, which represents prevailing American doctrine, and its recurring challenger, populist theory arguing that they do not accurately portray how modern democracies operate. He then constructs a model more consistent with how contemporary democracies actually function, and, in doing so, develops some original views of popular sovereignty and the American constitutional system. For this fiftieth-anniversary edition, Dahl has written an extensive new afterword that reevaluates Madisonian theory in light of recent research. And in a new foreword, he reflects back on his influential volume and the ways his views have evolved since he wrote it. For any student or scholar of political science, this new material is an essential update on a gold standard in the evolving field of democratic theory. "A Preface to Democratic Theory" is well worth the devoted attention of anyone who cares about democracy. "Political Science Quarterly ""

Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution

Abstract: Tracing neoliberalism's devastating erosions of democratic principles, practices, and cultures. Neoliberal rationality-ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, and culture-remakes everything and everyone in the image of homo oeconomicus. What happens when this rationality transposes the constituent elements of democracy into an economic register? In Undoing the Demos, Wendy Brown explains how democracy itself is imperiled. The demos disintegrates into bits of human capital; concerns with justice bow to the mandates of growth rates, credit ratings, and investment climates; liberty submits to the imperative of human capital appreciation; equality dissolves into market competition; and popular sovereignty grows incoherent. Liberal democratic practices may not survive these transformations. Radical democratic dreams may not either. In an original and compelling argument, Brown explains how and why neoliberal reason undoes the political form and political imaginary it falsely promises to secure and reinvigorate. Through meticulous analyses of neoliberalized law, political practices, governance, and education, she charts the new common sense. Undoing the Demos makes clear that for democracy to have a future, it must become an object of struggle and rethinking.

We, the People of Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship

Abstract: PREFACE vii 1 At the Borders of Europe 1 2 Homo nationalis: An Anthropological Sketch of the Nation-Form 11 Droit de cite or Apartheid? 31 4 Citizenship without Community? 51 5 Europe after Communism 78 6 World Borders, Political Borders 101 7 Outline of a Topography of Cruelty: Citizenship and Civility in the Era of Global Violence 115 8 Prolegomena to Sovereignty 133 9 Difficult Europe: Democracy under Construction 155 10 Democratic Citizenship or Popular Sovereignty? Reflections on Constitutional Debates in Europe 180 11 Europe: Vanishing Mediator? 203 NOTES 237 INDEX 283

The good citizen : a history of American civic life

Abstract: In 1996, less than half of all eligible voters bothered to vote. Fewer citizens each year follow government and public affairs regularly. Is popular sovereignty a failure? Not necessarily, argues Michael Schudson in this history of citizenship in America. This work sees American politics as evolving from a "politics of assent" in colonial times and the 18th century, in which voting generally reaffirmed the social hierarchy of the community; to a "politics of affiliation" in the 19th century, in which party loyalty was paramount for the good citizen. Progressive reforms around the turn of the century reduced the power of parties and increased the role of education, making way for the "informed citizen", which remains the ideal in American civil life at the end of the 20th century. A fourth model, "the rights-bearing citizen", supplements the "informed citizen" model and makes the courthouse as well as the voting booth a channel for citizenship. From the Civil Rights movement on, rights-consciousness has thrust politics into everyday life. This message seeks to counter recent claims that American civic life has declined because participation in traditional civically oriented associations has declined.

A genealogy of sovereignty

Abstract: The concept of sovereignty is central to international relations theory and theories of state formation, and provides the foundation of the conventional separation of modern politics into domestic and international spheres. In this book Jens Bartelson provides a critical analysis and conceptual history of sovereignty, dealing with this separation as reflected in philosophical and political texts during three periods: the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and Modernity. He argues that the concept of sovereignty and its place within political discourse are conditioned by philosophical and historiographical discontinuities between the periods, and that sovereignty should be regarded as a concept contingent upon, rather than fundamental to, political science and its history.