Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective

The first collaborative volume to explore popular sovereignty, a pivotal concept in the history of political thought.

Richard Bourke (Edited by), Quentin Skinner (Edited by)

9781107571396, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 July 2017

420 pages, 3 b/w illus.
23 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.63 kg

'Can popular sovereignty be more than an ideology we impose on the people we call our fellow citizens - and the past? The essays in Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner's collection all address this question. Some of the authors consider it soluble. They think that a people can be supreme, even though only a few ever rule …' Ben Slingo, The Times Literary Supplement

This collaborative volume offers the first historical reconstruction of the concept of popular sovereignty from antiquity to the twentieth century. First formulated between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the various early modern conceptions of the doctrine were heavily indebted to Roman reflection on forms of government and Athenian ideas of popular power. This study, edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, traces successive transformations of the doctrine, rather than narrating a linear development. It examines critical moments in the career of popular sovereignty, spanning antiquity, medieval Europe, the early modern wars of religion, the revolutions of the eighteenth century and their aftermath, decolonisation and mass democracy. Featuring original work by an international team of scholars, the book offers a reconsideration of one of the formative principles of contemporary politics by exploring its descent from classical city-states to the advent of the modern state.

Introduction Richard Bourke
1. Athenian democracy and popular tyranny Kinch Hoekstra
2. Popular sovereignty as control of officeholders: Aristotle on Greek democracy Melissa Lane
3. Popular sovereignty in the late Roman republic: Cicero and the will of the people Valentina Arena
4. Popolo and law: late medieval sovereignty in Marsilius and the jurists Serena Ferente
5. Democratic sovereignty and democratic government: the sleeping sovereign Richard Tuck
6. Parliamentary sovereignty, popular sovereignty, and Henry Parker's adjudicative standpoint Alan Cromartie
7. Popular sovereignty and representation in the English Civil War Lorenzo Sabbadini
8. Prerogative, popular sovereignty, and the American founding Eric Nelson
9. Popular sovereignty and political representation: Edmund Burke in the context of eighteenth-century thought Richard Bourke
10. From popular sovereignty to civil society in post-revolutionary France Bryan Garsten
11. Popular sovereignty as state theory in the nineteenth century Duncan Kelly
12. Popular sovereignty and anticolonialism Karuna Mantena
13. Popular sovereignty in an age of mass democracy: politics, parliament, and parties in Weber, Kelsen, Schmitt and beyond Timothy Stanton
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], History of ideas [JFCX], Philosophy [HP], History [HB]