The Time of Popular Sovereignty

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Time of the People

1. The Mob and the People in Mexico: A Historical Example of the Indeterminacy of Popular Unification

2. A Problem in Liberal Democratic Theory: The Indeterminacy of Popular Unification

3. Mechanical and Teleological Conceptions of the People

4. Dynamic Constitutionalism and Historical Time

5. The People Between Change and Stability

6. Creative Freedom and the People as Process

7. A Democratic People as Process

Conclusion: Radical Realism

Bibliography

Index

“How can ‘the people’ govern when they are always changing and most of them never meet? By depicting ‘the people’ as ever in process, Paulina Ochoa Espejo provides fresh answers to some of the most perplexing problems of modern democratic theory. An important and stimulating contribution.”

—Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania