Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction: Imagining Europe. Transnational contestation and civic populism: Paul Blokker- Section 1: Transnational mobilization -- 2. Left-wing social movements between strong European identities and the challenges of transnational activism. The Case of DiEM25: Ondřej Císař and Manès Weisskircher -- 3. Alter- not pro-European: The question of Europe in transnational activist networks: Antje Scharenberg -- 4. European space in the Euroalternativist discourse: detachment, utopia, strategy, and a life story: Yuliya Moskvina -- Section 2: Transnational left populism -- 5. Transnational Populism and the European Union: An Uneasy Alliance? The Case of DiEM25: Panos Panayotu -- 6. Transnational populism: the populist challenge from the Left?: Patricia Chiantera -- 7. Left Populism and 'Another Europe': Europeanization, International Sovereigntism and Transnationalism: Óscar García Agustín -- 8. Winds of Change, or Fighting the Windmills: Exploring the Economic Visions of the Pan-European Movement DiEM25: Kristián Šrám -- Section 3: Transnational constituent power and constitutionalism -- 9. European constitutional politics and the making of collective self-images -- 10. Technocracy and populism as a consequence of political de-constitutionalization: Pablo Holmes -- 11. Transnational Populism in Context: The UN, the EU, and Beyond: Kolja Möller -- 12. The Constitutional Deficit, Constituent Activism and the (Conference on the) Future of Europe: Paul Blokker.

Introduction : constitutional challenges, reform, and acceleration / Paul Blokker -- Part 1: reflections on constitutional change in times of acceleration. Towards participatory constitutionalism? : comparative European lessons / Francesco Palermo -- (Not) fast and (not) furious? : (un)constitutional responsiveness and the boundaries of constituent imagination / Zoran Oklopcic -- The multifaceted sovereign : domestic and international actors in constitutional regime change / Andrew Arato and Gábor Attila Tóth -- Part 2: Constitutional reforms in 'established' democracies. Participatory constitution-making and the renovation of the UK constitution / Silvia Suteu -- Constitutional paradigms : the Italian 1948 Constitution between conservation and reform / Paul Blokker -- Ireland's evolving constitution / Jane Suiter, David M. Farrell, and Clodagh Harris -- The constitution as a political tool in Iceland : from the periphery to the center of the political debate / Baldvin Thor Bergsson -- Part 3: Constitution-making, constitutional reform, and deadlock in 'new' democracies. Constitutional revision in Romania : post-accession pluralism in action / Bogdan Iancu -- Changing constitutional identity via amendment / Kriszta Kovács -- The rise and fall of constitutionalism in Hungary / Gábor Halmai.

"This book provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of democracy in Europe, with a focus on the new EU member states, and makes an important and original contribution to the debate on the future of European democracy. Author Paul Blokker seeks to provide a critical reconceptualization of the notion of democratic political culture by developing a 'multiple democracies' theoretical approach. He draws on debates in democratization theory and normative political theory, and presents a cultural-sociological approach for the analysis of democratization and democratic regimes. This approach emphasizes the historical and cultural embedment of democracy, identifies a potential variety of 'ethics of democracy' that underpin democratic political cultures, and points to the significance of democratic imagination in the interpretation and recombination of such ethics. This book explores the relevance of this approach by analysing multiple political cultures and their role in the emergence of democratic regimes in three new member states - Hungary, Poland, and Romania - providing a detailed description and analysis of political cultures by means of the analysis of constitutional politics, constitutional texts, and political elite discourses, and the identification of distinct politico-cultural elements that distinguish these societies from each other."--Publisher's description

Abstract
This symposium discusses Zoran Oklopcic's book Beyond the People: Constitutional Imaginaries and Constituent Imagination. The book is an important contribution to the emerging debate on constitutional imaginaries and imagination in constitutional theory, of which this introduction delineates the contours.

The main argument in the article is that liberal democracy, human rights, and the idea of constitutionalism have remained contested in the transformation processes in East-Central Europe since 1989. The prevalent literature in the legal and political sciences have understood the changes in East-Central Europe since 1989 as a transitional process in which legality, the rule of law, constitutionalism, and human rights became increasingly taken for granted. The liberal-constitutional project did however not find, in fact, widespread adherence. Most conspicuously so in Hungary (since 2010), and also in Poland (since 2015), the post-1989 constitutional-democratic narrative has become an explicit point of reference for conservative 'counter-constitutional' projects, which seek to undo some of the key premises of liberal-constitutional democracy. I hence argue that the post-1989 transformations have not ended and continue to be characterized by enduring contestation over constitutionalism, (foundational) norms, and human rights, as well as diverging interpretations of the finalité of the post-communist project of democratic society. A key finding is that the current populist resentment towards post-1989 liberal democratization builds to an important extent on culturally rearticulated legacies of non-liberal and conservative understandings of society.

The main argument is that the contemporary manifestations of right-wing populism in Europe ought to be understood, at least in part, as reactions to a distinctive form of postwar European society, which I will call here embedded constitutional democracy. The argument is that the populist reaction to embedded constitutional democracy generally takes a conservative form. This conservatism is expressed in rather different ways (ranging from ethnoreligious views to 'illiberal liberal' ones), but at the same time populism displays a shared core of criticisms on liberalism, and in particular regarding the internationalized or global version of liberalism. In the article, I will start with a brief analysis of the emergence of postwar society in the form of embedded constitutional democracy, used as a backcloth for the subsequent discussion of critical views of liberal understandings of the law in conservative populist thinking. I will, then, focus on populists' critical views of liberalism and 'globalism', analyzed in the form of contemporary articulations of (conservative) populism in both East-Central Europe (Hungary and Poland), and Western Europe (France, Italy, the Netherlands). In order to identify ideological affinities and critical positions, I discuss four themes: abstractness and inauthenticity, identity threat, domination, and legal fundamentalism.

Abstract
The article by Heike Krieger, published in this issue, is an important contribution to the debate on populism and the law, not least because of its emphasis on a distinctive populist approach to the law. Krieger's account lacks however in providing sufficient attention to three dimensions: popular sovereignty, constituent power and a shifting imaginary of the law. The relation of populism with popular sovereignty (and populism as a reaction to unresponsive institutions) is little discussed, and, hence, the explicit democratic claim of populists is downplayed. Constituent power is equally little touched upon, meaning that the populist understanding of the law as an obstacle but equally as a means to institutionalize a different democratic order is overlooked. The most important argument in the paper, which remains however too implicit, is that of a potentially shifting imaginary of the law. Krieger's argument points in the right direction, but it could be developed further by stressing the essentially and historically contested nature of the progressive international system and its weak spots in terms of legitimacy and accountability.

Abstract
The article discusses civic engagement in Romanian constitutionalism. First, I briefly discuss theoretical dimensions of the relation between citizens and constitutional change. Second, the Romanian Constitution will be analyzed in terms of formal constitutional instruments of civic participation. Third, civic engagement in constitution-making and constitutional reform since 1991 will be studied. I will conclude that in the early years of Romanian democratic constitutionalism, citizens' formal possibilities and actual capacities for engagement in constitutional politics have been severely limited. Civic participation has, however, become more promising and prominent in the 2003 and 2013 reform processes. The Romanian dual experience with the Forum Constituţional ought to be studied as part of a larger wave of participatory constitutional reform in Europe, which also helps to bring out a more general problem of such reform, ie, the lack of formal institutionalization of civic participation.