Democracy and constitutional reform: Deliberative versus populist constitutionalism

Abstract

Constitutional reform has been an important means to push populist authoritarian agendas in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela. The embrace of constitutional means and rhetoric in pursuit of these agendas has led to the growing recognition of ‘populist constitutionalism’ as a contemporary political phenomenon. In all four examples mentioned above, democracy, popular sovereignty and direct plebiscitary appeal to the people is the rhetorical and justificatory framework for constitutional reform. This, I worry, gives democracy a bad name and reinforces the widespread suspicion that citizens should not be directly involved in constitutional reform as popular participation can lead to dangerous majoritarianism and is easily manipulated by elite actors seeking to weaken constitutional checks and balances. But the problem, I argue, is not inherent in citizen’s participation in constitutional reform. In contrast to populist constitutionalism, I develop an idea of deliberative constitutionalism in which citizens can participate in constitution-making and reform without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist or anti-pluralist ends. Deliberative constitutionalism as I understand it has four features: a Habermasian co-originality thesis that articulates the interdependence of democracy and liberalism mediated by a conception of discourse; a proceduralized idea of popular sovereignty that reduces the tension between appeal to the people and respect for pluralism; the centrality of the public sphere over the voting booth as the cradle of democracy; institutional innovations intended to include citizens in constitutional reform (including through referendums) but avoid majoritarian and populist pathologies.

Razón Pública y Justicia Democrática: Los Fundamentos Teóricos de la Democracia Constitucional en el pensamiento político de John Rawls

“…En las dinámicas políticas propias de los sistemas contemporáneos, puede ocurrir que mayorías parlamentarias en ejercicio de la función legislativa, ajusten las leyes ordinarias conforme a intereses particulares no razonables (Chambers, 2019;Ferrajoli, 2014). El ejercicio de la revisión judicial que ejerce el Tribunal Constitucional, como representante del pueblo y garante de sus intereses plasmados en la Constitución, le permite confrontar el contenido de dicha ley ordinaria mayoritaria con los principios de justicia que irradian el texto constitucional.…”

“…El consenso es entrecruzado porque permite reunir las prescripciones que una concepción compartida de la justicia impone con los intereses particulares de las partes deliberantes(Rawls, 2002, p. 140). Esto puede señalarse en relación con las pretensiones de los textos constitucionales contemporáneos que buscan establecer un marco político-jurídico de cooperación a través de derechos fundamentales que buscan promover el bien general, sin sacrificar los intereses particulares, en especial los intereses fundamentales de las minorías de toda índole(Chambers, 2019;Ferrajoli, 2014).…”

The “populist” foundation of liberal democracy: Jan-Werner Müller, Chantal Mouffe, and post-foundationalism

“…Chambers 2019), it is important to note that he does not want to reduce liberal democracy to constitutional rights, and that he emphasizes the value of democratic participation beyond formal institutions. He expresses this with the term “popular constitutionalism,” and it takes him closer to deliberative approaches that take popular sovereignty, or democracy, and constitutional rights to be co-original (Chambers 2019; Cohen 2019; Habermas 2001; similarly Urbinati 2019). Indeed, his most recent work is a repudiation of liberal responses to populism (Müller 2021a, especially chapter 1).…”

“…This is her way of theorizing liberal democracy post-foundationally. Liberalism and democracy are contingently articulated together, as opposed to the Habermasian co-originality thesis (Habermas 2001; Abts and Rummens 2007; Chambers 2019; Müller 2017c; Urbinati 2019, 11–12; compare Müller 2021a, 47). Against that background, Mouffe identifies neoliberalism as not sufficiently democratic so that the market, possessive individualism, and so on, are taken as second nature.…”

“…Laclau wrote this in the context of deconstructing the usual way we think about populism in academia and in political debates, namely as a specific phenomenon that can be distinguished from democracy, above all liberal democracy (e.g. Abts and Rummens 2007;Arato 2013;Chambers 2019;Cohen 2019;Galston 2018;Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017;Müller 2017c;2021a;Rostbøll 2021;Urbinati 2019). Laclau sought to overturn the conceptual and normative hierarchy between democracy and populism, simultaneously generalizing a feature of the hitherto marginalized category (populism) as a general "logic" of democracy and politics.…”