The Politics of Peoplehood

Abstract

Contemporary political theory has made the question of the "people" a topic of sustained analysis. This article identifies two broad approaches taken-norm-based and contestation-based-and, noting some problems left outstanding, goes on to advance a complementary account centred on partisan practice. It suggests the definition of "the people" is closely bound up in the analysis of political conflict, and that partisans engaged in such conflict play an essential role in constructing and contesting different principled conceptions. The article goes on to show how such an account does not lead to a normatively hollow, purely historical conception of "the people," but rather highlights the normative importance of practices that, at the minimum, de-naturalise undesirable conceptions of the people and, at their best, give political legitimacy and a representative basis to those one might wish to see prosper. Keywords democratic theory, partisanship, peopleIn democratic theory and practice, the concept of the people is used to evoke that agent in the name of whom power should be exercised if it is to be considered justified. Yet what a people is and how it can be legitimately constituted is a matter of enduring dispute. If we follow the larger part of democratic

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“…I agree, therefore, with Wolkenstein (2017) and White and Ypi (2017) that the way populists ''over-politicise'' the question of peoplehood' holds the risk of becoming 'insensitive to the different ways claims are advanced in the public sphere'. Nevertheless, I do not think that all populist approaches run that risk, at least to the extent that social and economic power structures actually resemble an elite structure rather than one that where social and economic power is widely dispersed (see debate between Mills 1956;Dahl 1958;Bachrach & Baratz 1962;Kaltwasser 2014).…”

The Revival of Democratic Intergovernmentalism, First Principles and the Case for a Contest-Based Account of Democracy in the European Union

“…As scholars of partisanship have noted, even undesirable partisan commitments can in principle be presented in generalisable terms. However, it seems clear that ‘the fact that even undesirable forms of partisanship must articulate their claims in public and by appeal to generalizable principles (even if objectionable ones) acts to channel political conflict within the parameters of political legitimacy’ (White and Ypi, 2017: 450).…”

Demoicracy, Transnational Partisanship and the EU

“…Criterion (a) affords a first glimpse of this: in contrast to social movements and NGOs, who typically pursue more narrowly defined political goals and may even dissolve once these goals are achieved, parties are driven and sustained by the ‘coordinated and continuous effort by political agents to shape collective life in accordance with principled views of what power is and how it should be exercised’ (White and Ypi, ). They are cross‐generational associations with an emphatically collective purpose, promoting a normatively grounded vision of the public good.…”

“…What is distinctive about partisanship so understood is that partisans' principled views of what power is and how it should be exercised are always closely bound up with the question of who ‘the people’ are. Habitually partisans advocate their commitments in the name of the people to underline their fundamentally collective purpose and differentiate themselves from groupings whose political ambitions are more limited, such as social movements or interest groups (White and Ypi, ). In appealing to the people, however, partisans do not treat individuals' identities as passive traits that persons have or groups share, but rather as things that are continuously constructed and re‐constructed through collective acts and political processes that shape the communal imagination.…”