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Why Europe does not need a constitution: on the limits of constituent power as a tool for democratization
- 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.
Author: | Aliénor BallangéORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-696057 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09535-y |
ISSN: | 1572-8692 |
Parent Title (English): | Res publica |
Publisher: | HeinOnline ; Springer Science + Business Media B.V |
Place of publication: | Getzville, NY ; Dordrecht [u.a.] |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2021/11/15 |
Date of first Publication: | 2021/11/15 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2023/10/12 |
Tag: | Constituent moments; Constituent power; Constitution; Democratization; European Union |
Volume: | 28 |
Issue: | 4 |
Page Number: | 18 |
First Page: | 655 |
Last Page: | 672 |
Note: | This research has been supported by the Alfons and Gertrud Kassel Foundation through the Justitia Center for Advanced Studies (Goethe University Frankfurt). |
Note: | Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. |
HeBIS-PPN: | 515300764 |
Institutes: | Gesellschaftswissenschaften |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 32 Politikwissenschaft / 320 Politikwissenschaft |
3 Sozialwissenschaften / 34 Recht / 340 Recht | |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Licence (German): | ![]() |