Popular Sovereignty

These past few weeks I have been thinking about the concept of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty is the idea that all political power comes from the people directly by way of their consent. The consent of the governed and popular sovereignty go hand in hand. Today we think that this is self-evident, the Founders of the United States also thought this was self-evident. There was however a debate between this idea and the idea of the Divine Right of Kings, or the idea that political power belongs to whoever God bestows it to.  

What I would like to do with this Senior Seminar project is to look at the rise of popular sovereignty in the thirteen colonies which would later become the United States of America. The primary sources I have chosen to focus on are Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and John Locke's second Treatise on Government.

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political thinker who traveled to the United States to observe democracy in action. During this time France was in a period of transition from absolute monarchy to democratic rule, but the transition was not easy and France even reverted to monarchy for a time after the revolution. John Locke was an English philosopher who argued for popular sovereignty, but his identity was not revealed until after his death to avoid retaliation by the crown. Thomas Paine was an American revolutionary. His work Common Sense was actually propaganda to encourage revolution.

The reason I am so interested in this is because today there seems to me to be a disconnect between the people and the government. If there is a disconnect then popular sovereignty cannot exist by definition. The #blacklivesmatter movement is the best example I can find of this disconnect. Some people feel that they are simply not represented nor cared for by our leaders. They feel that they never agreed to any social contract. If the #blacklivesmatter movement can affect policy in any way then popular sovereignty still exists in this country. I certainly think that they have started to affect policy, our leaders are talking about these issues, specifically Senator Bernie Sanders and President Barack Obama.