Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

with the sources of sovereign power so as to make an opaque,
potentially demagogical mixture. Even when social movements
maintain their identities in a populist framework, as is often the
case, they must accept being part of a higher synthesis and being
subsumed within a hegemonic power. Hegemony is essential to
any populist government. When social movements maintain an
external relationship to the government, however, and defend
their autonomy, often through actions against the government,
the bases of any such populist hegemony are undermined.
The external relationship between social movements and
progressive governments that exists in several Latin American
countries—in varying degrees and varying forms—serves for us as
a "constitutional example." This is not an exceptional
phenomenon whose significance is limited to Latin America.
Instead we view this example as a model for other countries and
regions. It is difficult to think of a path toward both democratic
participation and a new constituent process of the common that
does not pass through this experience of an open dynamic of
constituent power in action. An open relationship between
movements and governments, a plural form of governance with
multiple entry points, and an indefinite formation of rules for the
forms of life that we invent: these are some of the elements that
constitute the procedural horizon of a participator}' democracy of
the common.
Agenda for New Powers and New Divisions of
Powers
The US Constitution has often been celebrated as a perfect
instrument of government, "a machine that would go of itself."
It's clear today, however, that not only the US Constitution but
all republican constitutions are machines that sputter and stop,
that get jammed up, that continually break down. From the
standpoint of the constitutional principles and truths posed by
the movements, it is not difficult to recognize their shortcomings.
The republican constitutions are in desperate need of
profound reform, but can they be transformed to create new
spaces and structures of democracy Does the principle of the
rule of private property' and capitalist markets, which is deeply