Hobbes and the Constituent Power Tradition

Sandra Leonie Field (Monash University)

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https://monash.zoom.us/j/88062345198?pwd=R1lUUGtSOXUwdTJydVlPODB3czdSUT09 

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Abstract:

Within democratic theory, the 'constituent power' paradigm grounds the legitimacy of everyday political institutions in a prior underlying 'constituent' power of the people. In this talk I'll situate Hobbes as a central but fundamentally ambivalent figure in the conceptual genealogy of constituent power. On the one hand, Sieyès's canonical statement of the theory of constituent power has actual historical filiation back to Hobbes's De Cive, and Sieyès's distinction between fundamental political authority and its everyday delegated exercise echoes Hobbes's model of 'sleeping sovereignty'. But on the other hand, I'll argue that Hobbes's broader theoretical frame is profoundly hostile to constituent power. Already in De Cive, the collective will of the people is a purely artificial construction which need not have any relation to the aggregated actual individual opinions in a population. And in the later Leviathan, Hobbes finds principled reasons to reject his earlier model of sleeping sovereignty. Despite Hobbes's deep theoretical influence on the subsequent constituent power tradition, I'll argue that he overall is best characterised the tradition's foundational hostile critic. Hobbes's critical arguments should give pause to present-day promoters of a neo-Hobbesian model of constituent power as an appropriate model for modern democracy.