Against democratic intergovernmentalism: The case for a theory of constituent power in the global realm

Patberg, Markus

doi:10.1093/icon/mow040

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Its longer-term consequences must be assessed by the mode of constitutional change through which they are produced. To be normatively justifiable, permanent authorizations require at least some form of democratic legitimacy (see also Patberg 2016). The often tacit and power-driven ratchet effects in the wake of IO exceptionalism pose a serious challenge to this standard.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

International authority and the emergency problematique: IO empowerment through crises

Kreuder-Sonnen

2019

Int. Theory

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This paper applies the concept of emergency powers to the crisis politics of international organizations (IOs). In the recent past, IOs like the UN Security Council, the WHO, and the EU have reacted to large-scale crises by resorting to assertive governance modes bending the limits of their competence and infringing on the rights of the rule-addressees. In contrast to rational and sociological institutionalist notions of mission creep, this paper submits that this practice constitutes ‘authority leaps’ which follow a distinct logic of exceptionalism: the expansion of executive discretion in both the horizontal (lowering of checks and balances) and the vertical (reduction of legal protection of subjects) dimension, justified by reference to political necessity. This ‘IO exceptionalism’, as argued here, represents a class of events which is observable across fundamentally different international institutions and issue areas. It is important not least because emergency politics tend to leave longer-term imprints on a polity’s authority structures. This article shows that the emergency powers of IOs have a tendency to normalize and become permanent features of the institution. Thus IO exceptionalism and its ratcheting up represent a mechanism of abrupt but sustainable authority expansion at the level of IOs.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

International authority and the emergency problematique: IO empowerment through crises

Kreuder-Sonnen

2019

Int. Theory

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“…In broader social and political theory, however, the term has also been used by scholars who reject the assumption that a relevant people simply exist and who argue—to the contrary—that peoples and political communities are created and delimited through political contestation (e.g. Agné, 2012; Lindahl, 2007; Loughlin, 2014; Möller, 2018; Näsström, 2003; Niesen, 2017; Patberg, 2016, 2018). The term constituent power must then be defined without reference to any given people, suggestively as a power which challenges the legitimacy of existing political orders constituted already, or which seeks to create new political orders with new basic rules, new political procedures, and/or new borders and membership criteria.…”

Section: Two Desiderata For Conceptions Of Democracy In Explanatory Irmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The exercise of constituent powers is then excluded from the possible practices of democracy, that is, powers not regulated by, but capable of breaking, existing political orders and constitutions (e.g. Näsström, 2003; Niesen, 2017; Patberg, 2016; Sieyès, 2003 (1789)). My contention is that commitment to either of these two conceptions (limiting democracy to politics within borders or to constituted powers, respectively) makes it self-contradictive to attribute democratic qualities to the partly anarchic and cross-border international processes at the core of explanatory IR.…”

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confidence: 99%

Why does global democracy not inspire explanatory research? Removing conceptual obstacles toward a new research agenda

Agné

2018

Journal of International Political Theory

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Democratic practices exist in politics within and beyond individual states. To date, however, it is only the democratic practices within states that have been analyzed in search for causal explanations of political outcomes, for example, peace and human rights protection. Having established the problematic nature of this situation, the purpose of this article is to explain why the situation emerges in political science and then to suggest a strategy to overcome it. The lack of attention to global democracy, or democracy beyond the state more generally, in explanatory theory is suggested to depend on prevalent but unnecessary conceptual delimitations of democracy which contradict standard assumptions about international politics. Those contradictions can be avoided, however, by defining democracy as rule by the largest group. It is argued that the concept of rule by the largest group, while protecting traditional virtues of democracy such as freedom and equality of individual persons in politics, allows scholars to describe a wider range of international practices than have been available for empirical research based on the dominating conceptions of democracy in normative and empirical literatures. Most fundamentally, it frees future research on the effects of democracy beyond the state from a key risk of self-contradiction.

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“…In this vein, some scholars, public intellectuals and social movements have been pointing out in recent times that facing a crisis of these characteristics requires a constituent renewal through a democratic process (Patberg 2018). Moreover, prominent European political leaders of different ideological orientations have pointed out its convenience or have been doing so for some time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

¿Estados Unidos de Europa? Mapeo y diseño de constituciones para Europa

Cadenas

2020

Est Deu

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En los últimos tiempos, académicos, intelectuales públicos, movimientos políticos y sociales y destacados líderes políticos europeos de diferentes orientaciones ideológicas han hecho un llamamiento a la creación de unos Estados Unidos de Europa. Desde su punto de vista, enfrentar la crisis de legitimidad de la UE requiere una renovación democrática a través de un proceso constituyente. Sin embargo, estas declaraciones no han sido acompañadas por un diseño específico sobre cómo instituir esta nueva Constitución Europea. Con el objeto de discutir las posibles vías de poner en práctica esta idea, este artículo presenta las principales formulaciones del poder constituyente europeo y su traducción a un diseño concreto de constitution-making. Recibido: 16.06.2020Aceptado: 21.12.2020

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Against democratic intergovernmentalism: The case for a theory of constituent power in the global realm

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

International authority and the emergency problematique: IO empowerment through crises

International authority and the emergency problematique: IO empowerment through crises

Why does global democracy not inspire explanatory research? Removing conceptual obstacles toward a new research agenda

¿Estados Unidos de Europa? Mapeo y diseño de constituciones para Europa

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