Abstract

In this chapter, I situate Hobbes as a fundamentally ambivalent figure in the conceptual genealogy of constituent power. On the one hand, Sieyès's canonical statement of the theory of constituent power has actual historical filiation back to Hobbes's De Cive, and Sieyès's distinction between fundamental political authority and its everyday delegated exercise echoes Hobbes's model of 'sleeping sovereignty'. But on the other hand, Hobbes's broader theoretical frame is profoundly hostile to constituent power. Already in De Cive, the collective will of the people is a purely artificial construction which need not have any relation to the aggregated actual individual opinions in a population, and can even be voiced by a king. And in the later Leviathan, Hobbes finds principled reasons to reject his earlier model of sleeping sovereignty. Despite Hobbes's deep theoretical influence on the subsequent constituent power tradition, he overall is best characterised the tradition's foundational hostile critic.