Debatterende eller besluttende offentlighed? - Om demokrati, offentlighed og den konstituerende magt hos Carl Schmitt og Hannah Arendt

The article investigates Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt’s theory of the constituent power. By comparing Schmitt and Arendt’s notions of democracy, the people and the public sphere, the article seeks to establish an alternative to deliberative democracy’s conceptualisation of the relation between democracy and the public sphere. By pointing to the differences between the debating and legitimating public sphere inherent in deliberative democracy on the one hand and the lawgiving and constituting public sphere in the works of Schmitt and Arendt on the other, the article investigates Schmitt’s notion of plebiscitary democracy and Arendt’s idea of a federal republic of councils. These political modes of organizations attempt to overcome the hierarchical relation between representatives and represented and seek to envision the people as able, when gathered together in public, to give laws themselves, and not only play the role as electors or debaters.