State of exception, civil disobedience and des-institution: towards a radical-democratic reading of the constituent power

In this paper, we intend to present a new reading of the civil disobedience to reveal its potentialities in building a radical democracy. For this purpose, in section 1 the two main traditions dedicated to think civil disobedience in the last century - political liberalism and constitutionalism - are revisited, indicating their advances and limitations. In section 2, the hypothesis that, nowadays, we live in a permanent economic state of exception is grounded, which is why the conventional understandings regarding civil disobedience which see it either as a mere political pressure mechanism or as a self-correcting device of the political and legal system - are insufficient before the paradigmatic framework of post-democracy. At last, after discussing the differences between constituent power and dis-instituting power, stating that civil disobedience is exercised in a relationship in which both are activated section 3), the article concludes with an indication of the features and forms of civil disobedience's action, which is understood as a manifestation of the constituent/dis-instituting power.