Popular sovereignty in an age of mass democracy:politics, parliament and parties in Weber, Kelsen, Schmitt and beyond

Max Weber developed a distinctive view of the possibilities and polarities of modern politics. His thinking about popular sovereignty is placed in the context of a long-running German debate about how to reconcile two principles, those of popular self-government from below and authority from above. Weber’s unwillingness to compromise these principles, or to subordinate one to the other, led him to adopt different positions at different times about the role of parliament and political parties in holding these two principles together in practice. As a result, he bequeathed no single set of bearings to the future. An attempt is made to show, by means of an analysis of the ways in which Weber developed his positions, and by a comparison of those positions with views developed in response by Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, that the question of whether Weber’s thought led directly to Schmitt’s or, indeed, to Kelsen’s, is a question mal posée. What popular sovereignty means in an age of mass democracy remains an open question which we must answer for ourselves.