plebeians

There are many reasons why constitutional democracies around the world are faltering and authoritarian nationalism rising. Professor Camila Vergara, a Chilean political philosopher and scholar of constitutional law, has one powerful, audacious explanation: Constitutions offer no meaningful political role for ordinary people in democratic governance, and so oligarchic institutions take root that privilege the domination of the few over the many.

It is the conceit of liberal constitutionalism that the will of the people will be robustly expressed through elections, for example, and representative legislatures. Such systems, in theory, will express the popular will and give the state legitimacy and stability. 

But as Vergara brilliantly argues in her book Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic (Princeton University Press, 2020), corruption is inherent in representative democracy. Oligarchs and other political elites nearly always capture modern republics unless ordinary people have substantive constitutional powers of their own.

Professor Vergara boldly argues for new/old types of "plebeian republicanism" such as citizen assemblies with real authority. This is the only way that constitutional systems can renew themselves and banish systemic corruption.