Contemporary representative governments are increasingly shaken by deepening citizens’ distrust, which is less and less channelled by civil society. This panel proposes to shed light on social movements that respond to the crisis of representation by recurring to memory. Indeed, the recovery of lost or marginalised democratic experiments can act as a form of constituent power, forming a different resource in envisioning alternatives to electoral democracy. By revisiting historical moments such as the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, the Spanish Revolution of 1936, the Zapatista or Kurdistan autonomous municipalities, and the grassroots democracy of Indigenous communities, panellists should explore the interminglement of the past with contemporary vindications of popular sovereignty.
This panel invites contributions from scholars in political theory, social movements, and political sociology to examine how memory can be mobilised in practice by citizens to respond to an experience of political disempowerment. It encourages reflections on how alternative and long-lasting traditions of direct democracy—such as workers’ councils, communal assemblies, the imperative mandate or Indigenous forms of self-rule—challenge the institutionalized limitations of modern representative democracy. Additionally, it explores how memory can reconceptualize constituent power as part of a continuous process of struggle against disenfranchisement and political subjection, rather than an ephemeral and juridical act. Panellists are also invited to reflect upon the obstacles and the potential limits of various trends of direct democracy. Lastly, to avoid any Eurocentric bias, the panel emphasizes the role of international circulations and anticolonial struggles in reclaiming lost traditions of direct democracy and control of representatives.
