Dual Constituent Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The People ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
We The People ◽  
Actual Decision ◽  
The Eu

This chapter addresses the public narrative of ‘We, the people and peoples of Europe’, which presents constituent power in the EU as shared between a European demos and the national demoi, and examines whether it amounts to a systematic model that withstands critical scrutiny. For this purpose, it draws on the political theory of split popular sovereignty, which interprets the EU as a federation (Bund) based on the democratic pillars of European citizens and European peoples. The chapter argues that Jürgen Habermas’s hypothetical notion of a pouvoir constituant mixte, which projects constituent power into the past, can be developed into a future-oriented model for actual decision-making in EU constitutional politics based on Habermas’s own idea of a permanent founding. Assessing the plausibility of this view, the chapter argues that the idea of dual constituent power avoids some of the shortcomings of regional cosmopolitanism and demoi-cracy, but also entails a problematic pre-commitment to the preservation of the EU member states, perplexingly stratifies constituent power across national and supranational levels, and blurs the procedural-institutional line between constituent and constituted powers.

Regional-Cosmopolitan Constituent Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The People ◽  
We The People ◽  
The Eu

This chapter deals with the question of whether the public narrative of ‘We, the people of Europe’, which claims constituent power for a cross-border demos composed of EU citizens, can be justified in terms of a systematic model. To that end, it draws on the political theory of regional cosmopolitanism, which holds that even though the EU is not a state, it has its own political community. The literature on regional cosmopolitanism offers two possible strategies of defending the idea of an EU-wide constituent power: a first-principles approach and a reconstructive approach. The chapter argues that only the latter proves viable, and then goes on to examine the merits of the model that it gives rise to. While regional-cosmopolitan constituent power plausibly responds to the fact that the EU has created a new group of addressees and authors of the law, it neglects the continuing importance of the member state peoples and fails to explain how an EU-wide constituent power could be reconciled with the compound and dependent nature of the EU polity.

Demoi-cratic Constituent Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Political System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Eu

This chapter turns to the public narrative of ‘We, the peoples of Europe’, according to which constituent power in the EU lies with the peoples of the member states, and asks to what extent it can be defended in systematic terms. In doing so, it draws on the political theory of demoi-cracy, which interprets the EU as a political system for the joint self-government of separate political communities. Building on the proposals of central demoi-cratic authors, the chapter discusses how the distinction between pouvoir constituant and pouvoir constitué could find a place in the theoretical framework of demoi-cracy. It then proceeds to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the resulting view. While the demoi-cratic model of constituent power is convincing in its claim that the national peoples must not be bypassed in EU constitutional politics, it fails to draw the necessary conclusion from the fact that European integration has brought about politically significant relations between the citizens of Europe—namely, that there is the need to enable the expression of cross-border cleavages.

Destituent Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

This chapter takes up the public narrative of ‘We, the multitude of Europe’, which suggests that the only hope for progressive change in the EU lies in a politics of disruption, and asks whether this idea can be defended based on a systematic model. To that end, it resorts to the political theory of destituent power, according to which opposition to or withdrawal from public authority can function as a legitimate trigger for constitutional change. Distinguishing between anti-juridical and juridical conceptions of destituent power, the chapter discusses to what extent the disruptive political strategies put forward by protest movements in the EU can be regarded as justifiable. Focusing on the juridical strand as the more plausible one, it argues that ideas of destituent power as ‘state civil disobedience’ run into a problem of authorization. By contrast, popular sovereignty-based approaches illuminate a neglected dimension of constituent power: the right to dismantle public authorities without the intention to create new ones. While such a model of destituent power in part captures the actions and demands of EU protest movements, it can only complement, not replace, the constructive side of constituent power.

scholarly journals Lithuanian public opinion and the EU membership

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-312
Author(s):  
Elena Dragomir
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Context ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The People ◽  
The Eu

During the early 1990s, following the restoration of independence, Lithuania reoriented in terms of foreign policy towards West. One of the state’s main foreign policy goals became the accession to the EU and NATO. Acknowledging that the ‘opinion of the people’ is a crucial factor in today’s democracy as it is important and necessary for politicians to know and take into consideration the ‘public opinion’, that is the opinion of the people they represent, this paper brings into attention the public support for the political pro-West project. The paper is structured in two main parts. The first one presents in short the politicians’ discourse regarding Lithuania’s accession to the EU and its general ‘returning to Europe’, in the general context of the state’s new foreign policy, while the second part presents the results of different public opinion surveys regarding the same issue. Comparing these two sides, in the end, the paper provides the answer that the Lithuanian people backed the political elites in their European projects. Although, the paper does not represent a breakthrough for the scientific community, its findings could be of interest for those less familiarized with the Lithuanian post-Cold War history, and especially for the Romanian public to whom this journal mainly addresses.

What’s in a Name? Questions for a New Monument

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margrethe Troensegaard
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Sculpture ◽  
The Social ◽  
We The People

What is the contemporary condition of the monument? In relation to the current issue’s discussion of immersive and discursive exhibition practices, this essay places itself at a slight remove; rather than to analyse and evaluate specific curatorial strategies it seeks to raise questions of relevance to such practices and begins by moving the discourse out of the museum and into the public space. The point of interrogation here is the monument, a form with a particular capacity to tease and expose the triad we find at the core of any curatorial discourse: the relation between institution, artwork and audience. Following an introductory reflection on how to describe and define a ‘monument’, a term so broadly used it all but loses its value, the text proceeds to examine three cases, Monument de la Renaissance Africaine, Dakar (2010), Danh Vo’s WE THE PEOPLE (DETAIL), various locations (2010-13), and Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument, New York (2013). The sequencing of these geographically and culturally diverse works makes way for an interrogatory piece of writing that addresses the question of permanence versus temporariness of the artwork as exhibition (and the exhibition as artwork), and that of the political agency of the artistic form. Probing the social agency of the monument, the text draws lines between the symbolising capacity once held by modern sculpture and the oscillation between immersion and discursiveness as two complimentary modes of communication. The discursive content or function of the monument (i.e. what it commemorates) is activated through the viewer’s personal, immersive encounter with its form, a form that potentially places its viewer as a participant to the construction of its message rather than as a mere receiver.

Another Birth of Freedom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angélica Maria Bernal
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
To Come ◽  
We The People

This chapter examines a previously unexplored perspective on the US civil rights refounding: Méndez v. Westminster School District et al. (1947), a case reflecting the political and legal struggles of Mexican American parents in 1940s Orange County to challenge their children’s segregation from California’s public schools. Against familiar interpretations that excluded groups advance social-justice claims before the broader society as appeals to the promises of the Founding or Founders, this chapter argues that even when situated as appeals within the law, foundational challenges are better understood as underauthorized ones: actions that self-authorize not on the basis of an order that once was, but on the basis of a citizen-subject position and political order that are at once precarious and yet to come. This type of constitutional politics, the chapter argues, challenges understandings of democratic self-constitution predicated on a unified “We, the People” by bringing to light the constituent power of the excluded.

scholarly journals Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E Scheuerman
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Proper Interpretation

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, modes of political illegality (e.g. conscientious objection, resistance, revolution). The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic (postnational) constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of his reformist agenda for the European Union not only breaks with his earlier understandable skepticism about the idea but also risks trimming the admirably ambitious sails of his radical democratic interpretation of civil disobedience.

scholarly journals Fiscal and Other Rules in EU Economic Governance: Helpful, Largely Irrelevant or Unenforceable?

2017 ◽  
Vol 239 ◽  
pp. R3-R13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Begg
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Fiscal Rules ◽  
The Political ◽  
Stability And Growth Pact ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Growth Pact ◽  
Macroeconomic Imbalances ◽  
Eu Economic Governance ◽  
The Eu

EU Member States, particularly in the Euro Area, have been pushed to adopt more extensive and intrusive fiscal rules, but what is the evidence that the rules are succeeding? The EU level Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) has been – and remains – the most visible rule-book, but it has been complemented by a profusion of national rules and by new provisions on other sources of macroeconomic imbalance. Much of the analysis of rules has concentrated on their technical merits, but tends to neglect the political economy of compliance. This paper examines the latter, looking at compliance with fiscal rules at EU and Member State levels and at the rules-based mechanisms for curbing other macroeconomic imbalances. It concludes that politically driven implementation and enforcement shortcomings have been given too little attention, putting at risk the integrity and effectiveness of the rules.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 201-206
Author(s):  
Lucy Atkinson ◽  
Andrew Blick ◽  
Matt Qvortrup
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Extension ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Popular Government ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Device Use ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Working Device

The referendum came onto the agenda in the UK in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, and it has never entirely disappeared from it, either as a proposition or a working device. Use of the referendum in the UK was conceived of and presented both as a natural extension of the principle of democracy that was then taking hold, and as a means of offsetting perceived defects with the representative variant of popular government that had developed. In particular, it was seen as a safeguard against the manipulative impact of parties that might lead the parliamentary system to serve the ends of factions within the elite above the people. It might enable the public to vote for a particular party with which they were broadly sympathetic without needing to endorse their entire programme; and would mean that a government could not implement measures of major significance to which a majority objected. It was largely envisaged as likely to have a conservative impact, creating a new and final means by which change might be blocked. Yet its appeal spread across the political spectrum; as did opposition to it....

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