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Constitution as Executive Order

The Administrative State and the Political Ontology of "We the People"

Arizona State University

This article offers a new strategy for examining the legitimacy question in public administration and representative government. A genealogy of political discourses is proposed to suggest that political forms have historically relied on a constitutive exclusion. The U.S. Constitution and administrative state are conceived of as events in this genealogy but are unique in that both deny the ontologically constitutive effect of the exclusion. Administration and constitutionalism are described as liberal political technologies, deployed to re-present and fabricate "the People," that is, to bring into reality the organic totality that is ontologically presupposed.

Key Words: legitimacy • history, public administration • representation • sovereignty • biopolitics

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