A Polity without a State? European Constitutionalism between Evolution and Revolution

Hauke Brunkhorst

No 14, ARENA Working Papers from ARENA

Abstract: In this paper the relationship between constitution and state is analysed. The EU's constitutional structure is evaluated according to three ideas of constitutionalism: the evolutionary or functionalist idea; the power-binding idea; and the power-establishing or revolutionary idea. It is found that one can claim that the EU has a constitution both in functional and power-constraining terms. What is lacking though is the revolutionary idea of a democratic constitution made by the people, facilitated through strong publics and authorised through general public debate. It is not the conventions of an elite remote from the public but only the citizens themselves who can turn the legally existing constitutional text books against the imperial and hegemonic reality of European law.

Keywords: constitution building; constitutional change; European Convention; legitimacy; democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.arena.uio.no/publications/working-papers2003/papers/03_14.xml Full text (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:erp:arenax:p0054

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ARENA Working Papers from ARENA
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sindre Eikrem Hervig ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).