Rethinking State Power

Frustrating the hopes of cosmopolitans and globalists, state power is back. Rather than imagining a replacement of sovereignty with law, political debates now revolve around the particular forms that state sovereignty might take. Even Europe, long seeing itself as the place from which a new international legal order might expand its reach, is reinvesting in military power to protect its sovereignty from the threats posed by Russia, China, and, in some ways, the United States. Yet this realization about the continuing centrality of the state does not mean an abandonment of the moral imperatives and prejudices of the people. On the contrary, state power is being recognized as the instrument through which the people can exercise their will, even as the state places constraints on popular sovereignty. The essays in this issue of Telos consider the ways in which state power interacts with popular attitudes and social institutions in order to establish the basis for sovereignty and law.

Introduction
David Pan

The Use and Abuse of Rousseau’s The Social Contract in Modern Political Thought: Toward a Reinterpretation
Mikkel Flohr

The Paradox of Self-Transformation, or, Could Totalitarianism Ever Succeed?
Wolfhart Totschnig

If We Could Stop Fighting Ourselves: Could the Implementation of Günther Jakobs’s Feindstrafrecht Bring About a More Fair Criminal Justice System?
Beau Mullen

Navigating Tension and Integration: Cultivating Positive Interaction between Governance and State-Building
Yuxiao Han

The Tensions between Socioeconomic Reforms and Islamic Doctrines in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030
Rumy Hasan

Ideas of History and the History of Ideas: The Case of the Rustat Monument
Jay Mens

Digital Sovereignty as Postliberalism: A Response to Milton Mueller’s Open Letter
Johannes Thumfart

Prospects for Trump’s Second Presidency

The Trump Restoration
Mark G. E. Kelly

Trump and the “Golden Age”
Greg Melleuish

Making the Hive Great Again: Spiritual Assault and the Politics of Erasure
Jay A. Gupta

Failure Is in the Cards
Paul W. Kahn

A Clash of Accelerationism and Adjudication: DOGE’s Attacks on the Administrative State
Timothy W. Luke

The Carnival King
Jesse Whitfield

Prospects for Trump’s Second Term: From Economy to Politics . . . and Back!
Michael Marder

Trump, Populism, and the New Class
David Pan