Agents of Popular Sovereignty

• DOI: 10.1177/0090591718786232
• Published date: 01 June 2019
• Date: 01 June 2019
• Subject Matter: Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591718786232

Political Theory

2019, Vol. 47(3) 338 –362

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591718786232

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Article

Agents of Popular

Sovereignty

Fabio Wolkenstein1,2

Abstract

Popular sovereignty requires that citizens perceive themselves as being able

to act and implement decisions, and that they are de facto causally connected

to mechanisms of decision making. I argue that the two most common

understandings of the exercise of popular sovereignty—which center on

direct decision making by the people as a whole and the indirect exercise of

democratic agency by elected representatives, respectively—are inadequate

in this respect, and go on to suggest a complementary account that stresses

the central role of internally democratic and participatory political parties in

actualising popular sovereignty, drawing on the democratic theory of Hans

Kelsen.

Keywords

popular sovereignty, political parties, Hans Kelsen, the people, intra-party

democracy

Popular sovereignty is the doctrine upon which modern democracy is built.

Its central idea is that a democratic polity is one in which power ultimately

vests in “the people.” In the earliest writings on the topic, perhaps most

famously in the work of Jean Bodin, this is not taken to mean that the people

actively engages in collective self-rule.1 While the people is conceived as the

subject to whose will the original constitution of the polity can be traced, it is

also made clear that that subject is normally ruled by others, becoming active

1Aarhus Universitet, Institut for Statskundskab, Aarhus, Denmark

2Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculteit der Maatschappij-en Gedragswetenschappen,

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Fabio Wolkenstein, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Aarhus Universitet Institut for

Statskundskab, Political Science, Bartholins Allé 7, Aarhus, DK 8000, Denmark.

Email: wolkenstein@ps.au.dk

786232PTXXXX10.1177/0090591718786232Political TheoryWolkenstein

research-article2018

Wolkenstein 339

only in periods of constitutional founding or change. Later accounts of popu-

lar sovereignty tend to advocate a more agentive view of the people.2 Most of

these accounts likewise declare the people the final authority over the consti-

tution, but they do not limit its exercise of agency to the exceptional moments

when the basic shape of the polity is articulated and re-articulated. Instead,

popular sovereignty is taken also to extend to “ordinary” democratic law-

making, the business of parliaments and parties.

This second, more agentive understanding of popular sovereignty is argu-

ably more widespread today than the earlier, more restrictive view, at least in

the sense that few would agree that a polity whose members are given no say

in ordinary law-making can be called democratic.3 How exactly can the peo-

ple exercise political agency on a regular basis? If we follow the larger part

of theoretical scholarship on the topic, we find that two different answers are

available. The first holds that popular sovereignty properly conceived can be

exercised only directly and by the people as a whole, as in a nation-wide

referendum.4 I call this the radical approach to popular sovereignty. The

second perspective conceives the exercise of popular sovereignty in indirect

terms, that is, as exercised not directly by the people but by authorised repre-

sentatives who seek to produce a general will in parliamentary procedures.5 I

call this the indirect approach to popular sovereignty.

The argument of this article is that, under contemporary political condi-

tions, neither of these approaches to popular sovereignty are adequate from

the point of view of citizens’ agency. The radical approach to popular sover-

eignty is susceptible to becoming a mere mechanism of acclamation that

often excludes citizens from determining the issues on which they are to

make a sovereign decision. The indirect approach, on the other hand, with its

insistence on a strict division of democratic labour between representatives

and represented, leaves too little room for citizens’ active engagement in

political life. To be sure, this may not in and of itself be problematic so long

as representative institutions reliably facilitate a close linkage between citi-

zens and their political representatives. But that is arguably not the case in the

democracies of our age. Since traditional representative mechanisms are

widely failing, what we need is a more robust mechanism for connecting citi-

zens to government.

Against this backdrop, the article seeks to reclaim an alternative account

of popular sovereignty that appears better placed to facilitate the effective

exercise of citizens’ agency than the two standard approaches. The figure to

whom it looks for inspiration is Hans Kelsen, who is widely known for dis-

missing the notion of popular sovereignty as a “political fiction” that only

serves to legitimise the autonomy of parliament, but in fact developed a dis-

tinctive theory of popular sovereignty centred on inclusive and participatory