Abstract

This dissertation attempts to conceptualize the age-old idea of democracy in a new way. The fundamental idea underlying this new conceptualization is the neglected notion of the people's sovereignty. Literally, "democracy" means rule by the people. However, the people cannot rule unless they are empowered to do so. Since its inception, liberal democracy has eschewed the question of the people's sovereignty and their political empowerment for a variety of reasons. Among these reasons, one should include the lack of faith of liberal democracy in ordinary citizens' ability to rule and the unavailability of practicable instruments and ways of empowering private citizens to act as sovereigns. Thus, liberal democracy's solution to the question of democracy has been the representative form of government that keeps citizens at a "safe" distance from the business of governing. The conceptualization attempted here resurrects the Rousseauean notion that the question of democracy is---not ultimately but---immediately the question of people's sovereignty. Moreover, this conceptualization relentlessly pursues the Rousseauean claim that sovereignty cannot be represented, and in order to be substantive, it ought to be exercised directly. The dissertation takes the existing theoretical framework of the North-American liberal democracy as its theoretical grounds and argues that the conception of democracy it develops is relevant to this society. In order to introduce the notion of sovereignty into the liberal democratic conceptual scheme, the dissertation attempts to "individuate" the idea of the people's sovereignty via individuating the notion of the political empowerment of the people. That is to say, it conceptualizes the legislative power of the people as a composition that is made up of the sum total of the equal sovereign powers of the equal individuals who comprise the people or the nation. Of course, such conceptualization would be meaningful only if there exist some feasible instruments or media that would empower individual citizens to exercise their individuated sovereign powers directly. It is argued that the present-day North-American society has such instruments and means at its disposal; i.e., it has both the material and technological means and infrastructures, and political-cultural institutions needed for the exercise of the individuated sovereign powers directly. In order to make a case for the practicability of direct exercise of the individuated sovereign powers, the dissertation proposes and discusses a realistic democratic utopia wherein individual citizens express their political wills directly via electronic media. These wills are then combined to compose policy and legislative decisions on major issues