The Making of Kelsen’s Concept of Democracy

Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie is certainly Kelsen’s best-known contribution to democratic theory. To be adequately understood, however, it must be seen not as a one-shot theoretical effort, but as the epitome of a decade-long inquiry into the foundations of democracy. Indeed, the book was not written at a single stroke: it was first published in 1920 as a short essay and reappeared in 1929 in a revised and significantly expanded form. This chapter unearths the forgotten genealogy of Kelsen’s seminal work by comparing its two editions and exploring their profound and overlooked differences; by doing so, it unearths, contextualises, and unpacks the transformations, both normative and practical, that took place in Kelsen’s democratic theory between the two versions of Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie. A careful textual and contextual analysis shows that Kelsen’s most famous publication on democracy was a response to the multiple challenges that gradually emerged throughout the 1920s. It also reveals how Kelsen’s analysis of party democracy grew out of a careful study of actual democratic institutions and their fragile stand in the intellectual and political landscape of interwar Europe.