Constituent Power and Democracy in Early Twentieth-Century France

Abstract Constituent power was a key notion of much legal and political theorizing during the French Third Republic (1870–1940). It was initially used to protect the Republic from the risks inherent to universal suffrage and mass political participation by entrenching representation and the hierarchy of norms. Slowly, it started to change function and became a tool to contest the undemocratic nature of party politics in Parliament and reclaim a more direct involvement of the people in legislation. This chapter tracks this shift in the theory and practice of constituent power by reconstructing the intellectual and political trajectory of one of the most eminent jurists of the Third Republic, Raymond Carré de Malberg, who directly tied the concept of constituent power to the use of legislative referenda.