Raphaël Girard publishes a book chapter on populism, ‘the people’ and popular sovereignty

The book chapter, entitled ‘Populism, “The People” and Popular Sovereignty’, is part of a collection on Constitutional Change and Popular Sovereignty, edited by Maria Cahill, Colm Ó Cinnéide, Seán Ó Conaill and Conor O’Mahony.

The aim of the chapter is to identify and explain the defining features of the ‘ideal-typical’ populist discourse, particularly as they relate to popular sovereignty and the concept of ‘the people’. It argues that populism has two main characteristics that relate to those two concepts. First, populism instrumentalises the ambiguous nature of the notion of ‘the people’, which is too ambiguous to be institutionalised in a legal sense. Second, populism puts forward a conception of ‘the people’ as an entity above the law, or populus legibus solutus est, which, as such, cannot ultimately be bound by legal, constitutional or institutional constraints.

The collection was published on 16 July 2021 by Routledge and is available here: https://bit.ly/3xQx828.