| Summary: | Abstract
The democratic theory of Claude Lefort, a French philosopher, is established on the idea of a society in
continuous construction. According to Claude Lefort, a society is not determined in advance. The forms
that it can take continuously change. From this point of view, Lefort attempts to understand modern
democracy as it emerges from the breakdown of the monarchy. The monarchistic mutation of the 18th
century provokes a new perception of power, because of the death of the king, the guarantor and
representative of the unity of the kingdom. Because of the fact that power was embodied in the prince,
and therefore gave society a body, an effective knowledge of what one meant to the other existed
through the social. From this point of view, Lefort draws a revolutionary and unprecedented conclusion
concerning democratic society. In democratic society, the locus of power becomes an empty place.
That means power belongs to none or to everyone. The point is that the institutional apparatus prevents
governments from appropriating power for their own ends, from incorporating it into themselves. The
exercise of power is subject to the procedures of periodical redistribution. It represents the outcome of
a controlled contest with permanent rules. This phenomenon implies an institutionalization of conflict,
i.e. of competition. The empty place of power refers to the idea that it cannot be occupied – it is such
that no individual and no group can be consubstantial with it – and it cannot be represented. In this
sense, then, democracy is a politico-social form in which the “openness” or the “indeterminacy” of the
social is institutionally registered. Concretely, the legitimacy of power emanates from popular suffrage,
as long as it is recognized that the identity of the People itself changes over time.
Through this approach, I try to consider the “Conférence Nationale Souveraine” (CNS) and the
Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) of the earlier 1990’s – in ex-Zaire and in South
Africa – as important events in terms of the definition of new social visions. My assumption is that these
events are genuine foundations of democratic societies. Through the Constitutions adopted in these
two negotiating forums, it seems clear that the break between the past and the future is established.
From the processes of negotiating to the agreed constitutions, all the elements conducive to build a
democracy (in Lefort’s terms) are combined.
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