Markus Patberg

Supranational constitutional politics and the method of rational reconstruction

In The Crisis of the European Union Jürgen Habermas claims that the constituent power in the EU is shared between the community of EU citizens and the political communities of the member states. By his own account, Habermas arrives at this concept of a dual constituent subject through a rational reconstruction of the genesis of the European constitution. This explanation, however, is not particularly illuminating since it is controversial what the term ‘rational reconstruction’ stands for. This article critically discusses the current state of research on rational reconstruction, develops a new reading of Habermas’ method and invokes this account for an explanation and evaluation of the notion of a European pouvoir constituant mixte.

Constituent Power beyond the State: An Emerging Debate in International Political Theory

In this review article, I suggest that the books under review should be conceived of as trailblazers of an emerging debate in international political theory. They all innovatively apply the concept of constituent power to the international realm and thereby contribute to establishing a new principle for the democratic legitimacy of international institutions. I argue that we should aim to develop a systematic theory of constituent power beyond the state because such a tool could considerably enhance the analytical categories of our research on democratic legitimacy beyond the state. Furthermore, I propose research questions for this new field of study, concerning conceptual, methodological and institutional aspects, and in turn apply these to the different conceptions of an international pouvoir constituant presented in the volumes under review in order to discuss their strengths and weaknesses.

The Levelling Up of Constituent Power in the European Union

In this article, I elaborate a conceptual innovation that underlies, if only in nascent form, Jurgen Habermass notion of pouvoir constituant mixte and could significantly advance research on the democratic legitimacy of EU constitutional politics: the levelling up of constituent power. According to this idea, state-level pouvoirs constituants may issue an authorization for constitutional decision-making at the supra-state level and thereby bring about a new constituent power whose composition can take a variety of forms. This conceptual framework paves the way for a systematic analysis of the EUs pouvoir constituant and its relation to the demoi of the member states. At the same time, it renders it an open normative question of who should be in charge of EU constitutional politics.

After the Brexit vote: what’s left of ‘split’ popular sovereignty?

ABSTRACT Political theory develops its normative positions on EU legitimacy with a view to what seems possible and acceptable under given political, social, and cultural conditions. Thus, the Brexit vote should give it a pause. In this article, I discuss if and to what extent we can hold on to the claim that the EU is based on a pouvoir constituant mixte. In particular, I examine three problems that the UK’s decision to leave the EU gives rise to. First, I address the analytical challenge of whether ‘split’ popular sovereignty is refuted as a rational reconstruction of the EU. Second, I turn to the normative-theoretical challenge of whether it is a category mistake to refer to (dual) constituent power in the context of the EU. Third, I deal with the political challenge of whether pouvoir constituant mixte is prone to confuse citizens and to scare them off with excessive ‘EUphoria’.

Introduction: The EU's Pouvoir Constituant Mixte – Exploring the Systematic Potential of an Innovative Category

According to Jurgen Habermass notion of pouvoir constituant mixte, the EU needs to derive its democratic legitimacy from a dual subject, consisting of the community of European citizens on the one hand and the communities of state citizens on the other. In this introduction, I outline some of the basic ideas behind the pouvoir constituant mixte, situate the category within wider debates about democracy in the EU and the future of European integration, and provide a brief summary of the symposium contributions.