This chapter takes up what Harold Laski has called the most real problem in modern politics, namely, the theoretical defense of the proposition that the people should rule. It returns to the first sustained philosophical engagement with this problem, in Platos Republic, and argues that the Republic remains a vital resource for thinking through the problem of the legitimacy of popular rule. The chapter focuses on the status of knowledge – its presence and absence – with regard both to the evaluation and the execution of political rule. It maintains that the Republic, far from being the epistocratic manifesto it is often taken to be – by both the defenders and critics of the view that not the people but the knowledgeable should rule – in fact expresses profound skepticism about any attempt to claim the right to rule on the basis of superior knowledge about the political good. The chapter then explores how the Republic, so understood, may inform our thinking about the theoretical legitimacy and practical implementation of the principle of popular sovereignty.

The Precipice of Hope: a conversation with Hahrie Han The concluding contribution to the volume features a conversation with scholar and activist Hahrie Han. Drawing on Han’s extensive experience as an adviser to popular movements across political divides, the conversation revisits the main questions of the volume: what is popular sovereignty and how can we understand and repurpose this historically important concept today? What is a people and under what conditions can a sense of solidarity across a vast array of social and political differences be build? Last but not least, are the idea and regulative ideal of rule of the people, and the very existence of a people that can govern itself, necessarily fictional, and to what extent is fiction an indispensable dimension of political concepts and norms.

The end of the twentieth century was once seen as the ultimate triumph of liberal, constitutional democracy, as new waves of democratization swept the world and as nation-states pursued bold plans of economic and institutional integration. By the third decade of the twenty-first century, however, constitutional democracies, liberal values, and global economic integration were under threat from a rising tide of populist authoritarianism. The distance between these two moments is not so great. In fact, their seemingly divergent moods and tendencies are best understood as distinct manifestations of common tensions that are fundamental to the idea of a sovereign and self-governing people. This introductory chapter argues that the resonance and endurance of popular sovereignty rest on its ambivalences and tensions, its contested status, and even its inherently fictional character. It demonstrates the value of revitalizing the study of popular sovereignty, conceived not as an ideological conviction or a rhetorical device but as a field of enduring questions through which seemingly disparate political phenomena can be understood.