The EU as an Antidote to Populism. Constitutional Law and Civic Engagement (original) (raw)

THE INFLUENCE OF POPULISM ON THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Europa of Founding Fathers : Investment in the common future. Olsztyn: The Faculty of Law and Administration at The University of Warmia and Mazury, 2013

  1. Problem statement: Fulfilling the vision of European countries with rich democratic tradition is not an easy task. One of the problems that should be noted on this journey is a random occurrence of the increase of populism within some nationalistic political systems and its influence on constitutions. At the global constitutional level, particularly in the regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia, we can note some constitutional systems with an expressive influence of populist ideology on the creation of constitution. However, even European constitutional area is not immune to this phenomenon, the Balkan countries being a good example of it, but also it is the case with the contemporary Hungarian situation with constitution. 2) Methods&Procedure: Comparative, theoretical, historical, legal, normative methods. 3) Results&Findings: In this work authors present the theoretical analysis of the conditions that favor the appearance of populism , as well as the way in which it affects the formation of constitutional provisions. Besides pointing to the common elements that help us recognize that a constitution has been created under the influence of populism , the author also directs his research efforts towards proving the hypothesis that populism destabilizes a constitutional democracy. 4) Conclusion: Such a situation can, at the same time, represent a threat to the fulfillment of an idea of a human European democratic society and therefore it is necessary to duly dedicate "creative efforts corresponding to the amount of the actual threat" in the context of Schuman's vision that " Europe cannot be created overnight."

Populism and State Sovereignty in the European Context

2019

The present paper aims to discuss the problem of declining political participation nowadays in conjunction with the level of state sovereignty in Europe. Is this a phenomenon worth worrying over? If so, for whom? Is the decline of people's interest in politics connected with a potential decline of state sovereignty? The issue of legitimacy in policymaking is the crux of the matter for the democratic future of the European Union. The multi-level analysis aims to link international relations theory and the state sovereignty problematique to the current issues of European party systems and their subsequent interlinkage with the EU structure.

DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE: THE POPULIST FACTOR IN THE CONTEMPORARY CRISIS OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACIES

Italian Journal of Public Law, 2020

The essay analysis the relentless rise of populist political and cultural phenomenon in a global perspective and, mainly, in the political context of EU Member States. Populism, in XXI century, represents a critical challenge for national and EU institutions and, in a broader perspective, for representative democracy itself. Anyway, in essence, what is populism? On closer inspection, populism is not a monolithic phenomenon, but it is a multifactorial experience, where the usual political categories appear undetermined, often mixed and reassembled. The paper aims to study, with a legal perspective and a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, some relevant populist political experiences in the EU space, their communicative and political strategy, the features of their leadership, to better understand its origins, policy contents, differences among various national experiences, political and social perspectives and, indeed, the impact on European constitutional democracy’s principles.

A Populist Monster and the future of Constitutional Democracy

Open Political Science, 2021

The central objective of the post-socialist European countries which are also Member States of the EU and Council of Europe, as proclaimed and enshrined in their constitutions before their official independence, is the establishment of a democracy based on the rule of law and effective legal protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms. In this article the author explains what, in his opinion, is the main problem and why these goals are still not sufficiently achieved: the ruthless simplification of the understanding of the social function and functioning of constitutional courts, which is narrow, rigid and holistically focused primarily or exclusively on the question of whether the judges of these courts are “left or right” in purely daily-political sense, and consequently, whether constitutional court decisions are taken (described, understood) as either “left or right” in purely and shallow daily-party-political sense/manner. With nothing else between and no other foundati...

Populism as a Constitutional Project

International Journal of Constitutional Law (ICON)

The engagement of conservative, populist governments with constitutional reform and constitution-making is perceived as a significant threat to the rule of law and democracy within the European Union. Constitutionalists often assume a relation of mutual exclusion between populism and constitutionalism. In contrast, I argue that while populism ought to be understood as a rejection of liberal constitutionalism, it equally constitutes a competing political force regarding the definition of constitutional democracy. The article first discusses populist constitutionalism in the context of the two, main modern constitutional traditions: the modernist and the revolutionary ones. Second, I discuss the populist critique of liberal constitutionalism, with a central focus on the recent cases of right-wing populism in power in East-Central Europe. Four dimensions are prominent: 1) popular sovereignty as the key justificatory claim of populism; 2) majority rule as the main populist mode of government; 3) instrumentalism as the legal-practical approach of populists; and 4) legal resentment as the populists’ main attitude towards public law. In conclusion, I argue that while the populist critique of liberal constitutionalism provides significant insights into structural problems of liberal democracy, populist constitutionalism ultimately fails to live up to its own democratic promise.

Constitutional Acceleration within the European Union and Beyond

Constitutional Acceleration within the European Union and Beyond, 2017

Modern constitutionalism as an idea and practice is facing great uncertainty in current times. Scholarly debates focus predominantly on constitutions beyond the state, while the predicament of domestic constitutionalism is much less considered. This volume contributes to a theoretically informed analysis of the key challenges and changes affecting domestic constitutionalism in Europe and beyond, departing from the idea of ‘constitutional acceleration’ or the increased propensity of different actors to engage in (formal) reform of the constitutional order. The volume points to a fundamental change in the function of constitutions in that constitutions themselves are increasingly subjects of political contestation rather than framing political debates. The collection of essays addresses a range of critical challenges – including societal acceleration, depoliticization, civic engagement, multi-faceted constituent power, modernization, populism and nationalism, and transnationalization. The volume includes a variety of disciplinary, and in some cases interdisciplinary, approaches, including (political) sociology, political science, constitutional law, and constitutional and legal theory, and will be of interest to researchers and students in any of these areas. Case studies focus on the EU and the wider European context, and include highly relevant but little known or ill-understood cases, such as the recent constitutional events in Iceland, Italy, or Romania, and cases of democratic reversal, such as Hungary, while also engaging with traditional but rapidly changing cases of constitutional interest, such as the UK.

Populist Constitutionalism: Reassessing the Relationship between Public Law and Politics

Paper submitted to the International Conference on ‘The Power of Public Law in the 21st Century’, On the occasion of the inauguration of the Central and Eastern European Regional Chapter of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S), Budapest, 20 April 2018. Recent scholarship has elaborated on the relationship between populism and constitutionalism by using the concept of populist constitutionalism (see, e.g., Blokker 2018; Müller 2017; Halmai 2018). My point of departure in this paper is the trivial remark that the term “populist constitutionalism” is not novel. The term found some resonance in the 1990s among U.S.-American legal scholars to describe something rather different (however, not entirely unrelated) than the relationship between populism and constitutionalism: Scholars who talked back then about populist constitutionalism (and those who keep talking about popular constitutionalism) wanted: (1) to question judicial supremacy, that is, the idea that the final and authoritative interpreter of the constitution is the judiciary and, more particularly, the U.S. Supreme Court, and (2) to bring out the importance of the elected branches of government, and ultimately of the people themselves, in making constitutional law (see, e.g., Parker 1993; Tushnet 1999; Kramer 2004). In this paper, I try to explore how these two different conceptions of populist constitutionalism (namely, as the relation between populism and constitutionalism on the one hand and as a particular theory of constitutional law on the other) relate to each other. I begin, in the following section, with a brief presentation of the recent scholarship on populist constitutionalism in the sense of the relationship between populism and constitutionalism. I argue that this can be better understood as the stance that populists (populist movements, leaders or parties, whether in opposition or in power) take towards constitutionalism. Populist constitutionalism in this sense is, then, about discourses and practices of populists. I proceed, in the third section, with a brief presentation of the older U.S.-American scholarship on populist (or popular) constitutionalism in the sense of a particular theory of constitutional law (see Corso 2014). I argue that this theory aspires to strengthen the voice of members of the “open community of the constitutional interpreters” (Häberle 1975) –constitutional scholars, politicians and ordinary people (as opposed to judges)– when they engage in constitutional interpretation. This, then, is not restricted to populists . Hence, populist constitutionalism in this second sense is about discourses and practices of constitutionalists (if I may use this rather vague but convenient, exactly because of its vagueness, term). In the last section I try to elaborate on the relationship between those two different conceptions of populist constitutionalism by proposing the following working hypothesis: Populist (or popular) constitutionalism as a discourse and practice of constitutional law, by enabling greater popular participation in constitutional decision-making, could serve as a corrective to some of the flaws of liberal democracy (notably, citizens’ alienation and disengagement) and, thus, mitigate populist challenges to constitutionalism, that is, populist constitutionalism as a discourse and practice of populists. Somewhat paradoxically, then, the main idea is that constitutionalism needs to become more “populist”, in order to overcome challenges posed by populist politics.