Understanding democracy as a product of citizen performances reduces the need for a defined ‘people’

In a paper recently presented at the 2015 APSA Annual Meeting, Liron Lavi addresses the conflict between the understanding of democracy as ‘the rule of the people’ and the fact that ‘the people’ will always be a heterogeneous, open, and dynamic concept. She writes that if democracy is understood as an effect produced by repetitive performative acts, ‘the people’ is produced as the source of democratic sovereignty and does not need to be a single, coherent entity.