  The understanding of democracy so far outlined informs Schmitt’s interpretation of the Weimar constitution (Dyzenhaus 1997, 38–101; Caldwell 1997, 85–119; Scheuerman 1999, 61–84; Hofmann 2002, 117–52; Kennedy 2004, 119–53; Neumann 2015, 77–304; Preuss 2016; Schupmann 2017). A democratic constitution, Schmitt argues in his Constitutional Theory, is the product of an exercise of constituent power on the part of a politically united people (CT 75–77, 125–30, 140–6). The creation of a democratic constitution must not be thought of along the lines of a social contract, since it presupposes the prior existence of a people as a political unity, as explicated in the Concept of the Political (CT 112–3; Böckenförde 1998). If the people did not already exist, Schmitt reasons, it would not be able to give itself a constitution, and a constitution not given by the people itself to itself would not be a democratic constitution. In giving itself a constitution a politically united people determines the concrete form of its political existence, but it does not bring itself into existence. Since a democratic constitution is a unilateral determination, on the part of an already existing people, of the concrete form of its political existence, the people’s constituent power must be inalienable. As long as a people exists it can always decide to give itself a new constitution (CT 140–1). Schmitt’s theory of constituent power has recently received a lot of attention from authors who believe it might help to reinvigorate constituted democracy (Kalyvas 2008, 79–186; Colon-Rios 2012).