Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

489· ------- -- ------- ---Popular Sovereignty as Procedureto Lenin, the theoretically informed intervention of revolutionarieswas merely supposed to complete the teleology of history drivenby the forces of production. Proceduralized popular sovereignty,however, no longer has any place for such trust in a philosophy ofhistory. Once the subject is removed from practical reason, theprogressive institutionalization of procedures of rational collectivewill-formation can no longer be conceived as purposive action, asa kind of sublime process of production. Rather, today the controversialrealization of universalist constitutional principles has becomea permanent process that is already under way in ordinarylegislation. The debates that precede decisions take place underconditions of a social and politicocultural transformation whosedirection, though certainly not open to control by direct politicalintervention, can be indirectly accelerated or inhibited. The con- ·stitution has thus lost its static character. Even if the wording ofnorms has not changed, their interpretations are in flux.Constitutional democracy is becoming a project, at once theoutcome and the accelerating catalyst of a rationalization of thelifeworld reaching far beyond the political. The sole substantial aimof the project is the gradual improvement of institutionalizedprocedures of rational collective will-formation, procedures thatcannot prejudge the participants' concrete goals. Each step alongthis path has repercussions on the political culture and forms oflife. Conversely, without the support of the sociopolitical culture,which cannot be produced upon demand, the forms of communicationadequate to practical reason cannot emerge.Such a culturalistic understanding o£ constitutional dynamicsseems to suggest that the sovereignty of the people should berelocated to the cultural dynamics of opinion-forming avant-gardes.This conjecture will fuel suspicions against intellectuals all themore: powerful in word, they grab for themselves the very powerthey profess to dissolve in the medium of the word. But at least oneobstacle stands in the way of domination by intellectuals: communicativepower can become effective only indirectly, insofar as itlimits the implementation of administrative, hence actually exercised,power. And unstructured public opinion can in turn functionas a siege of this sort only by way of accountable decisionmaking organized according to democratic procedures. What ismore important, the influence of intellectuals could coalesce into