Transformations of Democracy: Crisis, Protest and Legitimation - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1783480882 ISBN 13: 9781783480883

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015

Synopsis

Is democracy in crisis? On the one hand, it seems to be decaying under the leadership of political elites who make decisions behind closed doors. On the other hand, citizens are taking to the streets to firmly assert their political participation across the globe.

Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this collection examines the multiple transformations which both the practice and the idea of democracy are undergoing today. It starts by questioning whether there is a crisis of democracy, or if part of this crisis lies in the inadequacy of social and political theory to describe current challenges. Exploring a range of violent and non-violent forms of resistance, the book goes on to ask how these are related to the arts, what form of civility they require and whether they undermine the functioning of institutions. In the final section of the book, the contributors examine the normative foundations of democratic practices and institutions, especially with regard to the tension between human rights and democracy and the special character of democratic authority.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Celikates is associate professor of political and social philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he also directs the research project Transformations of Civil Disobedience.

Regina Kreide is professor of political theory and history of ideas at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany and is co-director of the Collaborative Research Center Dynamics of Security.

Tilo Wesche is interim professor of practical philosophy at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Transformations of Democracy

Crisis, Protest and Legitimation

By Robin Celikates, Regina Kreide, Tilo Wesche

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2015 Robin Celikates, Regina Kreide and Tilo Wesche
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-088-3

CHAPTER 1

The European Crisis

Hauke Brunkhorst

The Paradoxes of Constitutionalizing Democratic Capitalism

In the beginning, European unification was not the affirmation of peace — the protection of which led to the European Union receiving the Nobel Prize in 2012 (despite the fact that the Union, or some of its member states, was at war in several parts of the world).

In the beginning, it was not peace, but the negation of fascism — that is to say, the emancipation of Europe from the dictatorship of the Third Reich — that led to the unification of Europe.

In the beginning, the EU was not founded on the managerial mindset of possessive individualism and 'peaceful competitive struggle'.

In the beginning was political autonomy.

In the beginning was not rational choice and strategic action enabled by the rule of law, but rather the emancipation from any law that is not the law to which we have given our agreement.

Martti Koskenniemi calls the latter, in contrast to the 'managerial mindset', the Kantian mindset. For Kant, in his time, the scandal of so-called absolutism was not a lack of Rechtsstaat or rule of law. Kant had no doubt that the contemporary monarchy was a Rechtsstaat. For him, the scandal of the monarchy was its lack of political 'autonomy' and 'self-legislation', and the absence of 'structures of political representation'. Historically, the Kantian constitutional mindset is the mindset of the French Revolution, as it once was strikingly expressed by the young Karl Marx in one short sentence: 'Die gesetzgebende Gewalt hat die Französische Revolution gemacht' ('Legislative power has made the French Revolution').

THE HOUR OF THE LEGISLATOR

Today, the memory that it was the same constituent legislative power of the peoples of Europe that instigated the beginning of European unification between autumn 1944 (the last year of World War II in Europe) and 1957 has been repressed and displaced by the managerial mindset that had already become hegemonial in the 1950s. However, European unification did not begin with the Treaty of Paris in 1951 or the Treaty of Rome in 1957, but with the new constitutions that all the founding members (France, Belgium, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and West Germany) had established for themselves between 1944 and 1948. Moreover, the foundation of the first Communities of 1951 and 1957 was, in effect, a global revolutionary transformation of national and international law that was as deep as that of the French Revolution. All the constitutions of the founding members were made by new representatives of their respective peoples.

1. All the founding members had changed their political leaders and had replaced large parts of the former ruling classes with former resistance fighters or emigrants who had defected. They gained a power that had not existed either before or during the time of the Nazi occupation. Rebels, guerrillas and exiled politicians became heads and members of government. They had risked their lives, not solely as patriots, but as democrats or socialists who had struggled for certain rights and universal constitutional principles.

2. All the constitutions of the founding members were new or, in important aspects, revised and more democratic than ever before. Only now, all</

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783480882
• ISBN 13: 9781783480883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290
• Editor: Celikates Robin, Kreide Regina, Wesche Tilo