Sofia Näsström

The legitimacy of the people

In political theory it goes without saying that the constitution of government raises a claim for legitimacy. With the constitution of the people, however, it is different. It is often dismissed as a historical question. The conviction is that since the people cannot decide on its own composition the boundaries of democracy must be determined by other factors, such as the contingent forces of history. This article critically assesses this view. It argues that like the constitution of government, the constitution of the people raises a claim for legitimacy. The failure to see this is what makes many theorists run into the arms of history. They submit the legitimacy of the people to the arbitrary and asymmetrical forces of the present.

The Challenge of the All‐Affected Principle

This article examines the recent turn to the all-affected principle as a means to determine the proper boundaries of the people. The popularity of the principle notwithstanding, it argues that many of its proponents are prone to underestimating the challenge it raises to contemporary political theory. More specifically, two claims are made. Firstly, it argues that we must distinguish between two principles which, while both relating to the question of people-making, do so under radically different conditions: the all-subjected principle and the all-affected principle. Secondly, it argues that while the all-affected principle is a popular device in debates on cosmopolitan democracy it does not have a singular meaning. The all-affected principle in fact has three distinct roles to play, those of diagnosing, generating and justifying the boundaries of the people. The latter is the most difficult to account for in so far as it draws proponents of the all-affected principle into the very conflict that they set out to assess. It is concluded that this circumstance calls for a reorientation of the current debate, both with regard to the characterisation of the conflict under consideration and the challenge it raises to contemporary political theory.

What Globalization Overshadows

What is the connection between modern democratic thought and globalization? This article examines the rationale behind the present crisis of democracy. It demonstrates that the problem facing modern democratic thought has less to do with the asymmetries associated with the forces of globalization and more to do with an asymmetry within popular sovereignty itself: the fact that the boundaries of democracy cannot themselves be democratically legitimated. By making this argument the article seeks to move beyond the contemporary opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It shows that the appeal to globalization among contemporary political theorists to a large extent is analogous to the appeal to the nation during the French Revolution.

Representative Democracy as Tautology : Ankersmit and Lefort on Representation

Representative democracy is often assessed from the standpoint of direct democracy. Recently, however, many theorists have come to argue that representation forms a democratic model in its own right. The most powerful claim in this direction is to be found within two quite different strands of thinking: the aesthetic theory of Frank Ankersmit and the savage theory of Claude Lefort. In this article, I show that while Ankersmit and Lefort converge in their critique of direct rule, they provide us with two distinct models of democracy. Aesthetic democracy, I argue, in the end falls short as a democratic recuperation of representation. It reduces representation to delegation. Savage democracy proves more fruitful in this respect. It offers a representative view of politics without committing itself to the premises associated with political delegation

The Right to Have Rights Democratic, Not Political

Recent years have witnessed an upsurge of political readings of the right to have rights. The gist of the argument is that this right only comes into being in the act of claiming or taking it. At the same time, the political reading suffers from a normative lacuna which is difficult to ignore if right is not to collapse into might. The present article seeks to show that this normative lacuna can be accounted for if one situates the political reading in relation to a certain form of government. Acknowledging Montesquieu’s influence on Arendt’s resort to the principles which guide political action, the article offers a new interpretation of the normative basis of the right to have rights. It argues, first, that this right is democratic, not political, and second, that the principle which sets the right in motion is responsibility, not freedom.

Where is the representative turn going

Ask anyone you encounter on the street what democracy means and you are likely to be told that democracy means free and open elections. Stay a little longer and you will almost certainly hear a story as to why representative democracy is an elitist form of government that fails to address the actual concerns of the people. Is there truth in this claim, or is this claim itself the expression of a democratic society in which conflict and critique, in Nadia Urbinati’s terms, has become ‘the way for democracy to constantly recreate itself and improve’? What is significant in the four books under consideration is that they seek to restore the value of representation for democracy. Rather than seeing representative government as an elitist project opposed to popular rule they take representation to be essential to the working of democracy. In this respect, they form part of a new representative turn in democratic theory. Lower voting rates, the decline of party loyalty, the rise of populism, the appearance of self-appointed representatives and the increasing role of non-governmental organizations in global politics have altered the conditions under which representative democracy is supposed to operate. In both domestic and international politics, the boundaries of democracy are seen as less distinct than before. It is no longer self-evident who speaks for whom, and by what authority. Indeed, in the face of transnational problems like the environment the electoral system is itself perceived as a limitation on democracy insofar as it divides citizens into preconceived territorial constituencies. The problem, as Michael Saward puts it, is that while ‘we can choose particular politicians . . .we cannot

Democratic Representation Beyond Election

After many years of research on non-electoral representation, there is today a pressing need for criteria by which to distinguish democratic from non-democratic representative claims. In both domestic and global politics, there exist a number of popular movements, non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups professing to act on behalf of the people. Still, these actors are not elected by the people they claim to represent, and this raises doubts about their democratic legitimacy. This article offers a framework for thinking democratic representation beyond election. Extending Montesquieu’s classical analysis of the difference between forms of governments onto Lefort’s account of modern democracy, it makes two arguments. Firstly, it argues that modern democracy is a unique form of government based on an empty place of power. It is by its very nature made up of representative claims. To act on behalf of the people without electoral backup is therefore not foreign to modern democracy, but integral to its operation. At the same time, and secondly, it argues that all representative claims are not necessarily democratic. In order to distinguish democratic from non-democratic representative claims, it is therefore necessary to qualify what it means to act in the name of the people, and the article shows that such qualification can be found in “the principle of equality”.

A democratic critique of precarity

The term ‘precarity’ has become increasingly popular as a way to capture the material and psychological vulnerability resulting from neoliberal economic reforms. This article demonstrates that such precarity is incompatible with democracy. More specifically, it makes two arguments. First, and inspired by Montesquieu’s analysis of ‘the principles’, or public commitments behind different forms of government, it argues that modern democracy is a sui generis form of government animated and sustained by a principle of shared responsibility. Second, it shows that this principle is negated by the neoliberal form of governing. The neoliberal policies currently operating in many democratic countries not only push ever more people into precarious conditions where they have to compete against each other for security and status; by displacing onto individuals a responsibility that ought to be shared and divided between citizens, they corrupt the core of democracy itself. The article thus suggests that precarity is pr...

Political Equality in Transnational Democracy

This book is about the status of political equality under global political conditions. If political equality generally is considered a core feature of democracy, it has received little attention am ...

Democracy Counts: Problems of Equality in Transnational Democracy

Democracy counts — contemporary democratic theorists certainly agree on this.1 Democracy has become the key term among those who seek to legitimize global political institutions. At the same time, the term is more indeterminate than ever. Changes in the global political landscape have induced many theorists to rethink the central concepts of democracy. One such concept, perhaps the most basic of all, is “the people.” The problem that many theorists now face is that, while they want to democratize global institutions such as the UN or the WTO, there is not yet a people or demos on the global level to undertake this task.