Redes UAI (2019) Sovereignty without States: Constituent Power or a Global Blob?

The concept of sovereignty has been linked, in various traditions, to an already constituted power and to a constituent power. In this research and work, we will discuss to what extent  the processes of constitutionalism described by authors such as Teuber, Thornhill (and other Luhmannians) can provide an institutionalization of Globalization; and in that case, how far these new forms of constitution without state would entail a re-conceptualization of sovereignty, now without a “people” and without a constituent power. 

We will start out by determining what is understood conceptually as political freedom in two different traditions: One is ‘radical democracy’, and the other ‘republicanism’. I will refer to the tension between the concepts of “representation” and “democracy”.  Then, we will discuss the rise of globalization and evaluate the proposal of trans-national constitutionalization, influenced by Luhmann and their link up /or not with a democratic theory.