Ferrara's Intergenerational Vision of the Liberal Constitution against Populism: Introductory Notes

In these introductory notes we explore the arguments developed by Alessandro Ferrara in Sovereignty Across Generations and illustrate the commentaries collected in this special issue by Mariano Croce, Marco Santambrogio, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, Federico Gustavo Pizzetti and Francesca Pasquali. We also shed light on the aims that inspire Ferrara’s project. As we explain, Sovereignty Across Generation has a twofold aim, a philosophical one and a political one: on the one hand, the book aims to develop Rawls’s political liberalism by exploring the grounds and scope of constitutional legitimacy; on the other hand, it aims to address an urgent political threat to democratic legitimacy, namely populism. In addition, we emphasise that one of the key theses underpinning Ferrara’s argument is the conceptualisation of the sovereign people as an intergenerational entity composed of all generations living under the same constituency over time. For this reason, we conclude by showing how Ferrara’s arguments could be developed in other directions and domains, in particular by exploring the politics of climate change.