Vox populi: On the idea of a popular public, somewhat paradoxically

Abstract

Unprocedural strike action accompanied by high levels of violence pose challenges to union collective bargaining and other representative structures and institutions, evoking notions of the unruly crowd threatening constitutional values, political legitimacy, and public order. This article critically examines the oppositional terms in which this scenario tends to be constructed, and probes the limits to the political along different lines. While wishing to withhold an unproblematical attribution of ‘political’ from populist mobilisations, this article will explore the spaces in, and modes through which the democratic people appear. In particular, it will chart, in outlines, a genealogy of popular sovereignty, which could impel a revisiting and revising of notions of revolting populism.