What did the social contact theorists of the Enlightenment period mean by “ popular sovereignty”??

Question

What did the social contact theorists of the Enlightenment period mean by “ popular sovereignty”??

Answer 1

They meant that all political power begins with the individual.  That governments have no dynastic right to rule in perpetuity without the concurrence of the people.  That a ruler - be it a king or mayor or elected official - can only do so much if the people disagree.

Of course, there were some differences between the social contract theorists as well.  So, for Rousseau and John Locke, popular sovereignty meant something like today's ideal of democracy.  For Hobbes, it was less idealistic - his social contract idea boiled down to the claim that as between the state of nature (dog eat dog) and living in a society with laws (in his time, under a monarch), all of us would choose the monarch.  So for Hobbes, voting was not an essential part of popular sovereignty, nor would he support voting to the same extent as Locke and Rousseau.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

If I remember correctly, popular sovereignty meant rule by the people.  It was used as one of the bases of the Declaration of Independence in the US as well as the slavery compromise over Kansas in the 1850s (again, I am doing this from memory so you should fact check me.)

Try these websites, they might get you started:

http://www.dhm.de/magazine/unabhaengig/a...

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/histor...