Népszuverenitás: a klasszikus tan és kritikája
Popular Sovereignty: The Classical Doctrine and Its Criticism

Summary/Abstract: Since its rise in the 17th and 18th centuries, the idea of popular sovereignty made an ambiguous career. In political theory, it reached the zenith of its impact during the French revolution, in order to fall into disrepute as a reaction to its ideological uses in justifying terror and lawless dictatorship. In the last two centuries, it lost its foundational role in political theory, and disappeared from serious discussion. In constitutional practice, on the other hand, its advancement continued unabated up to these days. There is no single modern constitution which would not secure a pride of place to the principle of popular sovereignty. This ambiguity confronts us with a dilemma. Either popular sovereignty is an untenable idea and, then, its omnipresence in contemporary liberal-democratic constitutions is an embarrassment. Or popular sovereignty can be saved and, then, political theory must address its problem rather than ignoring it altogether. This text is a written version of a talk that the author delivered in the Hungarian Political Science Association, and that presented the first part of a larger study on popular sovereignty. It offers a reconstruction of the classical doctrine of popular sovereignty in order to examine the conceptual difficulties that doctrine was plagued with. Further parts, not included in this publication, will be dedicated to the question, whether popular sovereignty can be given a modern interpretation, capable of preserving the attractive features of the original idea that explain its omnipresence in modern liberal-democratic constitutions, and of avoiding the difficulties responsible for its demise in political theory.

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