The Demos as a Plural Subject
This article offers a conceptualization of the demos based on a cohesive approach to its agency and composition inspired by Margaret Gilbert’s plural subject theory of social groups. It entails three improvements to the existing literature on collective action as applied to demos. First and foremost, it provides a coherent approach to disputed problems of composition (normatively deciding who should be included) and agency (the capacity to function as an actor). Second, by understanding the demos as a plural subject, it offers a nuanced understanding of how democratic collective agency is constituted and can be maintained in large-scale collectives. Third, it presents the normativity that is at stake in the debates on the demos not merely as freestanding normative theory, but as being entailed in the ontology of social structures and entities.