Destituent Power

Abstract This chapter engages with negative conceptions of constituent power that have evolved throughout the past decades in the context of inter- and transnational constitutionalization. They emphasize that constituent power effectively functions as a device that threatens existing constituted powers with revocatory scenarios, irritations, and/or disobedient political action. The chapter reconstructs these scholarly discussions by distinguishing between principled and more strategic-realist approaches to destituent power and inquires how such negative constitutional politics plays out on the level of states, movements, and legal systems. Finally, it discusses how notions of destituent power can be used in order to investigate the recent crisis of liberal internationalism.