Frygten for fraktioner i forestillinger om folket: Hobbes, Locke og Rousseau om suverænitet, folk og politik

In this article, I argue that the concept of popular sovereignty retains the political form of earlier notions of sovereignty insofar as it construes the fundamental political relationship as being that between the individual on the one hand and the state, nation or people on the other. Thereby, the individual becomes the essential political subject and delineates all other associations as political subjects. The article argues that a decisive part of this conception of sovereignty consists in the emptying of the political space between the state and the individual of competing political associations, and that this must be seen as an essential part of the early-modern ‘police’-project that sought to create good order within the body politic. The article analyses the three early modern political thinkers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as part of this police-project, that is to say, the intellectual historical emptying of the political space within the state. The article concludes that the modern conception of politics constitutes a particular political order, which cannot think associations as political subjects.