Power, Process, and Popular Sovereignty

While democracy is widely embraced today, many are reticent about encouraging too much democracy. After all, popular rule has been said to lead to majority tyranny. Countering warnings about the dangers of popular sovereignty, Julie Mostov contends that it is the integrity of sovereignty - more democracy and not less - that secures everyone from the exercise of power beyond right. Outlining a "process-oriented" understanding of popular sovereignty, Mostov explores relationships of power in the processes of social choice. She confronts outcome-oriented approaches to popular sovereignty and argues that it is the terms of political participation and the background conditions of social choice that distinguish democracy as a decision process and popular sovereignty as a form of rule. Popular sovereignty is characterized by the ability of differently situated individuals to gather and use resources on equal footing with others in decision-making and not by the outcomes of particular decisions or the mere participation in these decisions.
This is a book about creating and sustaining conditions for democratic decision-making and about asserting and recognizing rights in a way that appreciates the links between rights and responsibilities, between difference and common claims on social cooperations. Mostov advocates directing more attention to the relationship of individuals in the processes of social choice and to the conditions of democratic practice that support the dignity of persons as choosers who could make a difference.
Promoting a reconsideration of the notion of popular sovereignty, Mostov draws on classic texts in the history of political thought. Her relational approach, however, differs from other theoretical studies of this subject both in the way that she defines and defends a process-oriented notion of sovereignty and in the way that she looks beyond ordinary sites of power in examining the conditions that affect the independence and equality of individuals in processes of social choice. Thus, in examining the background conditions of popular rule, she moves from the notion of sovereignty in Bodin, Hobbes, and Rousseau to issues of bodily integrity and physical security, race, and gender.

"I found Julie Mostov's work exciting and instructive. She presents a fresh, insightful, forcefully argued, and scholarly documented thesis." --Peter Bachrach, author of The Theory of Democratic Elitism