The Proto-Populist origins of Danish Democracy: Towards a conceptual history of "the people" (folket) in the constitutional struggles in Denmark, 1830-1920

The proposed paper will reconstruct and analyse the conceptual history of “the people” [Folket] and its relationship to the constitutional formation of democracy in modern Danish history. It provides a historical and discursive analysis of the constitution, development and central role that proto-populist concepts of the people played in the constitutional struggles between 1830 and 1920 that transformed the Kingdom of Denmark from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional democracy. I show how these struggles shaped and were shaped by a series of proto-populist conceptions of the people as an independent political subject politically and morally counterposed to reigning political elites and the institutions that empowered them, which in turn shaped the conceptualization and constitutionalization of democracy and/as “the people’s rule” [Folkestyre] in Denmark. Moreover, I show that these proto-populist conceptions of the people that constructed it as a coherent and autonomous entity that stood outside and above government, elites, parliamentary majorities and, ultimately, the constitution itself. These conceptions of the people and/as a constituent power were mobilized by different movements in order legitimize successive constitutional reforms that culminated in the current constitution.

The paper will utilize the methodological resources of conceptual history to analyse archival materials from the Danish constitutional struggle as well as the successive constitutional processes (hosted by the Royal Danish Library). It traces the transformation of the feudal notion of people as a category of subjects of patriarchal authority into the sole legitimate political authority and constituent power underpinning constitutional democracy in Denmark. It follows the transformation of the concept of the people via the introduction and deployment of natural law arguments to legitimize absolutism, over the mobilization of German romantic nationalist notions of the people in the National Liberals’ struggle for a “free constitution” between 1830 and 1849 and the subsequent transformation of these ideas in the Left Party’s struggle for parliamentary democracy (qua the people’s rule) in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, which was only completed by the labour movement’s popular mobilizations against the king’s coup during the Easter Crisis in 1920, which preceded and shaped the current Danish constitution. Ultimately, the proposed paper challenges contemporary arguments about the supposedly adverse relationship between populism and constitutional democracy, by showing how proto-populist conceptions of the people preceded and shaped constitutional democracy in Denmark and, to a large extend, continues to shape constitutional practice.