Identity vs. representation: what makes 'the people'? Rethinking democratic citizenship through (and beyond) Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: The concept of ‘citizenship’ has significantly evolved since the work by Thomas Marshall in 1950: the emergence of various kinds of ‘identity/difference’ politics, the
transformation of political representation within our ‘glocal’ democracies and the
theoretical challenges posed by the EU (especially about pivotal notions such as
sovereignty, constituent power and peoplehood) questioned the traditional account of
liberal democratic citizenship (sect. 0). Combining political history and theory, the present
paper looks backwards to the debate between Carl Schmitt and Hans Kelsen in 1920s
Weimar over the fate of parliamentary democracy to distill useful insights for rethinking
citizenship via representation. Mapping their topography of democratic governments and
their diverging understanding of what keeps a community of citizens together (sects. 1-2)
will help developing a more sophisticated notion of ‘the people’ beyond standard
dichotomies in democratic theory: namely, those of identity (Schmitt)/representation
(Kelsen), constituent (Schmittian)/constituted (Kelsenian) power, substantial
(Schmittian)/procedural (Kelsenian) democracy also recurring in the normative
understanding of the Union (sect. 3).
Source: Perspectives on Federalism
Author: David Ragazzoni
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2183096345