Popular Sovereignty in the West: Polities, contention, and ideas

Description

This book is an inquiry into the history of the idea of popular sovereignty as it has been shaped by the struggles between rulers and ruled. It builds on the notion that a thorough analysis of how the idea of popular sovereignty emerges from, and interacts with, a political history of contention within changing polities can help us to draw similarities and differences with our own age. Providing a historical perspective to the present day, Nootens pays strong attention to the role of democratization processes and to the relationship between meanings conveyed by the idea of popular sovereignty, political contention, and changing representations of the governing relationship. The latter has been undergoing significant transformations in the last decades, and these transformations impact significantly upon people’s rights, interests, wealth, and capacity to decide for themselves. In order to understand popular sovereignty in an era of globalization, this book argues that focus should be put on current struggles between rulers and ruled, as well as on current transformations of the relationship between public and private spheres. Understanding the claims involved in current processes of contention over decision-making processes is key to understanding popular sovereignty in an era of globalization. Making an important contribution to debates on sovereignty, Popular Sovereignty in the West will be of interest to students and scholars of modern political theory, sovereignty, and democratization studies. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The origins of the notion of popular sovereignty in the West The Roman notion of lex regia The recovery of Aristotelian political theory and the Italian city-republics Conciliarism Radical political ideas in the sixteenth century The significance of the Huguenots Locke on sovereignty 2 Ruler sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and state sovereignty Bodin, absolutism, and resistance Legislative power The state 3 The functions of sovereignty State sovereignty The functions of sovereignty Sovereignty and the nature of the governing relationship in the modern state 4 Sovereignty, the people, and the nation The idea of the people, ancient and modern The modern people and the idea of the nation The people as a single-statuscommunity Is the sovereign people a fiction? 5 Popular sovereignty, contention, and democratization Popular sovereignty in the making: the development of mass national politics in Britain What can we learn from the British case? 6 Popular sovereignty and plurinational democracies Minority nations and self-rule Popular sovereignty, the nation, and state-building Plurinationalism, heterogeneity, and popular sovereignty 7 Popular sovereignty in the age of globalization Globalization, political power, and the public sphere A ‘fragmented tyranny’? Globalization, contention, and popular sovereignty Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index