|
Forum Paper Title: Globalization, Fragmentation and the Future of Constitutionalism
Description of Forum Paper:
For the last two centuries, constitutionalism has been one of the main paradigms of political and legal development in the Western world, and for the last 50 years even worldwide. Most of the states of the world now have constitutions, and many of them even provide for institutional mechanisms for the enforcement of their constitutions, like constitutional adjudication. And although there have long been practical problems and powerful theoretical critiques, constitutionalism now seems to occupy a stronger place than it has ever before.
Yet the processes of supranational integration in Europe and of globalization worldwide provide a challenge to the classical concept of constitutionalism, both because of the multiplication of decision-making spheres and because of the severance of the ties between the levels of political decision-making and the political communities as we know them, the nation-states. Constitutional theory has reacted to that challenge in essentially two ways. It has either transferred classical constitutional theory to the higher levels and sought to deal with the arising problems in much the same way as in federal states. Or it has categorically rejected such a transfer because it held central elements of constitutionalism not to be present on the European or international levels. In particular, this strand of thought focused on the lack of a demos and thus the lack of an essential element of democracy. It has often coincided with a general rejection of supra- or international integration and an insistence on the nation-state as the central site of decision-making.
|
Top