Constituent Power in Political Liberalism

Abstract Political liberalism is a paradigm, founded by John Rawls, that specifies what it means for constituent power to be exercised in ways conducive to the persistence over time of a stable and just society of free and equal citizens who subscribe to very different, often conflicting, conceptions of the good. In this chapter, the fundamentals of political liberalism are first outlined in general. Then, the specific political-liberal conceptions of constituent power developed by Rawls, Bruce Ackerman, and Frank Michelman are reconstructed. The dialogue among these authors provides a detailed account of what political liberalism can say on the topic of constituent power. Finally, some new developments of the paradigm (e.g. the notion of ‘vertical reciprocity’) are mentioned. The concluding remarks offer considerations on the persisting relevance of the notion of constituent power for liberal-democratic theory.