Die Erfindung »demokratischer Repräsentation« in den Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers are not only the intellectual underpinning of the US constitution but also its most important commentary. In it, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay combine democracy and representation, two concepts which had previously been regarded as mutually exclusive. Their ideas first made it possible to achieve democracy not only on a small scale but in a large continental state with a diverse population. Beatrice Brunhöber however not only introduces the Federalist Papers into the academic discussion, a work on par with European classics of constitutional theory but for the most part overlooked in Germany, she analyzes the Federalist Papers and demonstrates how political decision-making by means of democratic representation are even possible in a pluralistic society. She furthermore establishes the foundations for an understanding of representation that neither requires the existence of a preceding entity, such as an ethnic people, nor is aimed at the incarnation of a specific concept, such as a presumed public benefit, and thus paves the way for the idea of democratic representation beyond the nation state.