TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ballangé, Aliénor
T1  - Why Europe does not need a constitution: on the limits of constituent power as a tool for democratization
T2  - Res publica
N2  - In this article, I question the use of the notion of ‘constituent power’ as a tool for the democratization of the European Union (EU). Rather than seeing the absence of a transnational constituent power as a cause of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’, I identify it as an opportunity for unfettered democratic participation. Against the reification of power-in-action into a power-constituted-in-law, I argue that the democratization of the EU can only be achieved through the multiplication of ‘constituent moments’. I begin by deconstructing the normative justifications surrounding the concept of constituent power. Here I analyze the structural aporia of constituent power and question the autonomous and emancipatory dimension of this notion. I then test the theoretical hypothesis of this structural aporia of the popular constituent power by comparing it with the historical experiments of a European popular constituent power. Finally, based on these theoretical and empirical observations, I propose to replace the ambivalence of the concept of popular constituent power with a more cautious approach to the bottom-up democratization of European integration: that of a multiplication of transnational constituent moments.
KW  - European Union
KW  - Democratization
KW  - Constitution
KW  - Constituent power
KW  - Constituent moments
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/69605
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-696057
SN  - 1572-8692
N1  - This research has been supported by the Alfons and Gertrud Kassel Foundation through the Justitia Center for Advanced Studies (Goethe University Frankfurt).
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
VL  - 28
IS  - 4
SP  - 655
EP  - 672
PB  - HeinOnline ; Springer Science + Business Media B.V
CY  - Getzville, NY ; Dordrecht [u.a.]
ER  -