Investiga tions into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From 'the capitalist imaginary' to the 'democratic imaginary', from the 'ecological imaginary' to 'the global imaginary' -and beyond -the social imaginaries fi eld has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. Th e recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable fi eld and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks for understanding social imaginaries, although the fi eld as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative (as opposed to imitative). We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a signifi cant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-(auto)instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the fi eld and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination (including deliberations on the reproductive and creative imaginations, as well as consideration of contemporary Japanese contributions), the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifi cally political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their intercivilisational encounters. Th e social imaginaries fi eld imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold signifi cant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena (including their manifest crises). Th e essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making off ers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices.

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The majority of studies of post-communism – habitually grouped under the heading of 'transitology' – understand the transition ultimately as a political and cultural convergence of the ex-communist societies with Western Europe. Even those critical approaches that regard the post-communist transition as a relatively unique phenomenon (as in the approaches of path dependency and neo-classical sociology) tend to conflate normative prescriptions with empirical descriptions and to move within an overall framework of what Michael Kennedy has aptly called 'transition culture'. This article argues instead that the transition's nature can only be fully grasped if a case-specific and historical-contextual approach is taken. In theoretical terms, a three-step movement to grasp diversity in Central and Eastern Europe is proposed: (1) the acknowledgement of the plurality of modernizing agency and its creativity; (2) the acknowledgement of multi-interpretability and difference as primary elements of modernity; and (3) a sensitivity to the resulting institutional variety in societal constellations. In substantive terms, it is argued that diversity is a distinctive mark of Europe that is bound to persist in an enlarged Europe, despite the spirit of assimilation in the accession process.

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: (i) popular sovereignty as the key justificatory claim of populism; (ii) majority rule as the main populist mode of government; (iii) instrumentalism as the legal–practical approach of populists; and (iv) legal resentment as the populists’ main attitude toward 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.