Although the modern age is often described as the age of democratic revolutions, the subject of popular foundings has not captured the imagination of contemporary political thought. Most of the time, democratic theory and political science treat as the object of their inquiry normal politics, institutionalized power, and consolidated democracies. The aim of Andreas Kalyvas' study is to show why it is important for democratic theory to rethink the question of its beginnings. Is there a founding unique to democracies? Can a democracy be democratically established? What are the implications of expanding democratic politics in light of the question of whether and how to address democracy's beginnings? Kalyvas addresses these questions and scrutinizes the possibility of democratic beginnings in terms of the category of the extraordinary, as he reconstructs it from the writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt and their views on the creation of new political, symbolic, and constitutional orders.
Author(s): Andreas Kalyvas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 336
Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Acknowledgments......Page 9
Abbreviations......Page 11
Introduction......Page 13
PART I CHARISMATIC POLITICS AND THE SYMBOLIC FOUNDATIONS OF POWER......Page 29
1 Revisiting Weber's Concept of the Political......Page 41
Liberalism and the Political......Page 50
Marxism and the Political......Page 53
2 Charismatic Politics......Page 58
Religion, Ideology, and the Symbolic......Page 61
Domination, Legitimacy, and Charismatic Politics......Page 66
3 Disavowing Charismatic Politics......Page 77
PART II THE EXCEPTION AND CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS......Page 91
Sovereignty and Dictatorship......Page 100
The Popular Sovereign and Democracy......Page 108
Schmitt's Challenge to Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law......Page 112
5 Toward a Theory of Democratic Constitutionalism......Page 139
What Is a Constitution?......Page 141
Schmitt as a Defender of Constitutionalism......Page 150
From Schmitt to Ackerman and Back to Schmitt......Page 175
Popular Assemblies and the Extra-Institutional Sovereign......Page 186
PART III TAMING THE EXTRAORDINARY......Page 199
7 Extraordinary Beginnings I......Page 206
Political Freedom as Founding......Page 212
Against Sovereignty......Page 222
These Impossible Absolute Beginnings......Page 235
8 Extraordinary Beginnings II......Page 244
The Founding Compact......Page 245
The Immanent Principle: Arendt and Habermas......Page 253
9 The Republic of Councils......Page 266
From the Constituent Power to the Constituted Republic......Page 276
The Problem of Representation......Page 292
The Moment of Civil Disobedience......Page 295
Conclusion......Page 304
Bibliography......Page 313
Index......Page 333
