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2024 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

Populist Constitutionalism and Representation. Reflections on the People in a New ‘Social Question’ Perspective

verfasst von : Charalampos Kouroundis

Erschienen in: The People’s Constitution

Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland

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Abstract

This essay discusses the relation between populist constitutionalism and left-wing political populism, focusing primarily on their perception of ‘the people’. Being a distinctive current in United States (US) constitutional theory since the early nineties, populist or popular constitutionalism takes the people not just as a ‘name’ to which legislation and other political action are attributed. They consider them as citizens having the final word on the interpretation and the implementation of the Constitution. Populist constitutionalism cannot be associated with nationalist or authoritarian versions of political populism but has common features with left-wing populism which also aims to enhance people’s role and favors political mobilization. Notwithstanding their differences, populist constitutionalism and left-wing populism challenge minimalist theories of electoral democracy and legal distrust towards mass political activity. Their critical approach towards the dominant view of the Constitution from the standpoint of the ordinary people can be upheld if it is combined with questioning the social content and the institutional arrangements of existing liberal democracy.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Stopping Authoritarian Populist Projects: Why Constitutionalism Is Not the Sole Answer

Nächstes Kapitel Lobbyism vs. Populism: A Brief Comparison U.S.A.-Italy

See for example Habermas (2006), p. 43 and more generally Beck (2006).

The constitutional aspect of the crisis has been successfully described by Wilkinson (2021) as a reprise of ‘authoritarian liberalism’, revealing the authoritarian face of economic liberalism that Herman Heller identified as characteristic of the late Weimar regime.

Among the huge recent literature on political populism, see in this vein Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017). The difficulty of defining populism has also been pointed out during its previous broad use in the 1960s. See explicitly the contributions of Margaret Canovan and other scholars in Ioneskou and Gellner (1969). For the return of populism after the last economic crisis see Stavrakakis (2014), pp. 505–517.

Tzanakopoulou (2019), pp. 162–163.

Corso (2014), p. 444.

Hamon and Troper (2003), p. 174.

Hobbes (1965), p. 126.

Urbinati (2006), p. 22.

See Pitkin (1967), pp. 38–42.

See Schmitt (1996), especially pp. 78–86.

The most influential among them was that of Schumpeter (2003).

See Urbinati (2006), p. 23.

Tushnet (1985), pp. 1503–1506, attributed the dominance of formalist themes in constitutional theory to the intellectual power of the Hobbesian tradition. Tushnet’s contribution has been articulated as part of the critical legal studies, which can be perceived as a predecessor to populist constitutionalism. For an account of critical legal studies until that moment, see Kennedy and Kare (1984), pp. 461–490. Tushnet himself became then one of the proponents of popular or populist constitutionalism.

Parker (1994), p. 3.

Parker (1994), p. 62.

Parker (1994), pp. 71–72.

Parker (1994), pp. 95–96. The emphasis is in the original.

See Balkin (1995), pp. 1943–1944, n. 23, 1952–1953.

Amar (1997), p. 1657.

See Tushnet (1999), pp. x–xi. Tushnet also clarifies that he uses the term in a slightly different way from Parker, though he admits that their usages are related.

See Tushnet (1999), p. 52. Cf Ackerman (1991), p. 59, who had already criticized what he called the ‘court-centered view’, insisting that ‘lawyers and judges must resist the temptation to make the Supreme Court the alpha as well as the omega’.

See Corso (2014), p. 458.

Kramer (2004).

Kramer (2004), p. 8.

Post and Siegel (2009), pp. 25–36.

Balkin (2011), p. 59.

See, among many, Urbinati (2019), especially pp. 1–76.

Bellamy (2007).

Tushnet and Bugarič (2021).

See Tushnet and Bugarič (2021), pp. 12–32.

Brown vs Board of Εducation of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

See Dudziac (2000), pp. 79–114.

See Ackerman (2014), pp. 83–104.

Tushnet (1999), pp. 145–146.

Harper vs Virginia State Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).

Ackerman and Nou (2009), p. 148.

See Ackerman (2014), pp. 6–7.

See Ackerman (1991), pp. 163–322. It is also worth mentioning that, as Manin (1997), p. 174 rightly stressed, the American representative system was from the beginning consciously constituted not upon the Hobbesian basis of ‘absolute representation’ but upon the combination of representation with freedom of public opinion, namely expressed through the press, demonstrations and petitions.

According to Corso (2014), p. 464, ‘[p]opulist constitutionalism shall be read as a critical theory of the Constitution’.

Mouffe (2019).

It is interesting that this argument is also adopted by Nadia Urbinati, who argues that representation activates the sovereign people, which is not presupposed, as in ontological versions of sovereignty, but produced. See Urbinati (2014), pp. 160–166.

Mouffe (2005), p. 7.

Mouffe (2019), pp. 90–93.

Mouffe (2019), pp. 48–51.

Mouffe (1999), p. 52.

Mouffe (2019), p. 15. For the relation of political populism with Schmitt see Blokker (2018), pp. 113–127, who is, however, referring to the right-wing version of political populism.

Mouffe (2019), pp. 3, 50.

For a Marxist critique to Mouffe see Jackson (2019), pp. 135–158.

This is demonstrated by the fact that Parker (1994), pp. 7–50, although he is obviously politically progressive, used as examples of popular political energy actions apportioned to a fascist crowd in Thomas Mann’s novel “Mario and the Magician”.

Tushnet (2000), p. 553.

Parker (1994), p. 115.

Bobbio (1986), p. 43.

Rancière (1999), p. 29.

Parker (1994), pp. 101–102.

See Manin (1997), p. 109 and more generally pp. 108–131.

See in this direction Devenney (2019), p. 227.

Marx (1984), pp. 211–241.

Devenney (2019), pp. 228–229.

For the way in which the Europeanisation of national law, pushed to the extreme during the debt crisis, has led to constitutional deregulation, see Yannakopoulos (2019). For the historical process which led to the current disposition of the European Union see Kouroundis (2019), pp. 51–66.

Callinicos (1991), p. 109.

See E.M. Wood’s critique of the earlier formulation of Mouffe’s theory, in Wood (1986), p. 68.

Kelsen (2013), pp. 35–37. The book was first printed in 1920 and was reprinted in 1929.

Kelsen (2013), pp. 47–56.

Kelsen (2013), pp. 54–56, n. 7.

See for example Kelsen (1955).

That is how I understand the call of Vergis and Nanopoulos (2019), p. 155 (in their case in an EU framework) for a revitalization of the substantive debate around the conditions that are necessary for democratic processes to be put in place.

Kelsen (2006), p. 292.

Marx (1969), pp. 59–60.

See Ackerman (2014), pp. 16–19.

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Titel: Populist Constitutionalism and Representation. Reflections on the People in a New ‘Social Question’ Perspective
verfasst von: Charalampos Kouroundis
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland
Buch: The People’s Constitution
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-71888-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-71889-2

Copyright-Jahr: 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-71889-2_11