The revival of constituent power?

Since the large-scale political transformations of the 1990s, we have been witnessing a revival of the category of constituent power – broadly understood as the democratic right of ‘the people’ to make and change constitutions. More recently, this shift has been met with scepticism. Today’s challenges to the concept hold it responsible for the erosion of constitutional democracies through populist and authoritarian mobilisation. At the same time, democratic movements within and outside Europe have formulated their demands in the language of constituent power, claiming legitimacy for acts of constitutional contestation and renewal.

The Oxford Handbook of Constituent Power (OUP, 2026; eds. P. Niesen, M. Patberg, L. Rubinelli) examines the intellectual roots as well as paradigmatic agents, sites, and manifestations of constituent power today. The roundtable brings together experts in the field to discuss a key contention of the handbook – namely, that the category of constituent power is indispensable to explain and evaluate contemporary conflicts about political legitimacy, especially, but not exclusively, in federal and transnational polities such as the United Kingdom and the European Union.

This event is also available online 

Meet our speakers and chair

• Erin F. Delaney is the Inaugural Director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism and the Leverhulme Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at University College London.
• Oliver Garner is a Lecturer in Law at City Law School, City St George’s, University of London from September 2025. 
• Martin Loughlin is Professor of Law, Emeritus Professor of Public Law at LSE.
• Markus Patberg is Research Associate in Political Theory at the University of Hamburg.
• Carmen Pavel is Reader in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at King’s College London. 
• Jonathan White is Professor of Politics and Deputy Head of the European Institute at LSE, where he researches and teaches on democracy, political thought and political theory. 
• Mike Wilkinson is Professor of Law at LSE. 

For more informabout the speakers please click here

Any questions? Contact ei.events@lse.ac.uk