Constituent power and the law
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Constituent power and the law Joel Colo´n-Rı´os, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2020, xiii+334 pp., ISBN: 978-0198785989 Contemporary Political Theory (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00450-0
If diagnoses over the last few years are to be believed, the rise of populism directly threatens the foundational values and institutions of western-style democracies. The electoral success of right-wing populist figures is often buoyed by the violent revanchism of their constituents. One high-profile response has been the reemergence of ‘radical centrists’ in legacy media outlets and well-connected political bodies, who even-handedly decry both the revanchists and their left opposition (e.g. Brooks, 2016; Mounk, 2018). Such ‘radicals’ claim that only greater civic participation in our democratic institutions can defeat the populist threat. But their response seems to ignore the fundamental cause of populist agitation: a lack of trust in these political institutions. Hence their cries fall on disinterested – more accurately, disenfranchised – ears, and functionally hamper debates over how to address populist demands through creative alternatives to presently existing state forms. An under-appreciated resource for thinking such alternatives can be found in constitutional theory: constituent power, the ability of people to create a constitution. If the legitimacy of all modern political institutions is built upon the consent of the governed, this power grounds all institutions in a given constitutional order, and its exercise can be understood as the political act par excellence (Rancie`re, 2005). Still, a paradox lies at the heart of constituent power: despite its formal illegality, its extra-legal character nonetheless exerts a profound influence on the constituted powers of legal and political institutions, without reducing to them. How, then, might such a concept allow us to creatively re-think our present political and legal arrangements? Or, as Joel Colo´n-Rı´os asks, can original constituent power manifest itself after a constitution is put in place (p. 16)? In giving his answer, Colo´n-Rı´os has written the high-theory constitutional analysis for our populist moment: a historically informed, theoretically nuanced investigation into the fraught relation between sovereignty, constituent power, and (constitutional) law that underpins contemporary political conflicts. While this Ó 2020 Springer Nature Limited. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory www.palgrave.com/journals
Review
review cannot do justice to the richness of Colo´n-Rı´os’ monograph, what follows are some of its theoretical and practical high notes. In fact, if there is any fault in the book, it is that the overall conceptual investigation can sometimes get lost amidst all the fascinating historical and theoretical tracks the author lays out. In his first three substantive chapters, Colo´n-Rı´os details how the modern concept of constituent power emerged from the competing constitutional theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emman
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