Princeton University (USA) held a workshop entitled, “We, the People: Rethinking Narratives of Popular Sovereignty.” It was co-sponsored by the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra and the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competition.

David Thunder, an ICS research fellow within the Religion and Civil Society project, tied the workshop in with his work on a new paradigm of social order and self-government called associative pluralism. His proposal seeks to give effective representation to the different associations present in society and to delegate much of government’s tasks to the local sphere. David Thunder’s research is financed by a Ramón y Cajal Scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competition.

During the workshop, the expert focused on popular sovereignty and self-government from a critical standpoint. He started with the idea that the modern state "is based on the notion that its citizens, by authorizing officials to govern in their name, can confer their collective power on the institutions of the State, and thus constitute a ‘sovereign people.'”

He argued that various thinkers doubt the usefulness of this notion and its institutionalization through representative democracy: "Along with its institutional baggage, the notion of a ‘sovereign people’ tends to facilitate the domination of majoritarian and elite political processes and outcomes, diverting them from the true interests of the affected parties."

His contribution aimed to "provide a diagnosis of the insufficiency of the sovereign state as a framework for rational self-government, exploring how it tends to legitimize uniform structures of government that are inadequate for a complex and plural society," he said.

The event also featured two other speakers from American centers, including Paulina Ochoa of Haverford University and Barbara Buckinx of Princeton. Boleslaw Z. Kabala, also of Princeton, presented the final conclusions.

A democratic people as process

In her presentation, Paulina Ochoa described the paradoxes that arise when defining a democratic people and the debate about the nature and function of the demos in a democracy.

"The definitions that scholars give and the judgments that populism delivers depend on whether 'The People' is conceived of as a historical fact- as populists do- or as a hypothetical ideal that guides legislation- as liberals do." Her proposal consists in taking into account a democratic people as a process.

For her part, Barbara Buckinx justified the extension of the status of “citizenship” to non-citizen residents. The expert critically evaluated proposals that could respond to the problem of non-citizen residents and suggested alternative ways for states to meet their demands.