Constituent Power: A response to critics
Abstract
Let me start by expressing my gratitude to the editors of the Verfassung blog and to the contributors to this debate. When I was writing the book, the very idea of it being read sent me into a panic. It still does today, but I am lucky to have found generous and insightful readers in Peter Niesen, Carlos Pérez Crespo, Markus Patberg and Esther Neuhann. Their comments raise both general methodological points and specific historical questions about the chapters. I will try to answer them in turn: I will first engage with the methodological critiques and I will then move to interpretative questions about the story I tell in the book, its protagonists and their historical contexts. The main aim of the book is, as I see it, to explain how the idea of constituent power has been used to make sense of the democratic principle according to which power belongs to the people. […]
