The Absent Sovereign and the Invisible Foundation: Political Liberalism’s Aporias in Theorizing Constituent Power

Abstract

How can constituent power be simultaneously constrained by law and genuinely democratic? This question has haunted constitutional theory since Sieyès distinguished constituent from constituted power. This article argues that political liberalism’s attempts to resolve this paradox generate two structural aporias. First, anti-foundationalist approaches to constituent power inevitably produce an invisible foundation: normative standards like “the most reasonable” operate as quasi-transcendental constraints even while disclaiming metaphysical commitments. Second, locating sovereignty in a transgenerational people creates an absent sovereign: ultimate democratic authority resides in an entity accessible only through juridical interpretation, never directly present to living citizens. Through critical engagement with Alessandro Ferrara’s Sovereignty across Generations (2023) and recent scholarship on intergenerational constitutionalism, I demonstrate that these aporias are not contingent flaws in particular theories but constitutive features of political liberalism’s broader project. Drawing on Lefort’s concept of democracy’s “empty place of power” and Arendt’s notion of natality, I argue that constitutional democracy depends on sustaining permanent tensions between popular sovereignty and normative constraint, between democratic self-governance and inherited commitments. Political liberalism’s future lies in embracing rather than eliminating its internal contradictions, accepting that sovereignty must remain contested if freedom is to endure without metaphysical foundations.