Enacting a parallel world: Political protest against the transnational constellation

In 1992, the Frankfurt scholar Ingeborg Maus launched a polemical attack against then current narratives of democratic protest, objecting to the languages of ‘resistance’ or ‘civil disobedience’ as defensive, servile and insufficiently transformative. This article explores in how far the language of constituent power can be adopted as an alternative justificatory strategy for civil disobedience in transnational protests. In contrast to current approaches that look at states as agents of international civil disobedience-as-constituent power, I suggest we look at political movements. I focus on the example of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) which understands itself as a pan-European movement of civil disobedience, at the same time working towards an articulation and exercise of constituent power among the people(s) of Europe. In the final section, I sharpen the criteria for the invocation of constituent power in transnational protest in distinguishing between its articulation, activation and exercise.

Section: Objections and Clarificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reframing civil disobedience: Constituent power as a language of transnational protest

Niesen

2018

“…Niesen’s (2019b) reading of European democratic movements as instances of claims to constituent power that cannot and seek not to articulate those demands in new constituted structures similarly changes the substructure without similarly radical change to the superstructure. Volk’s (2019a) conception of transnational political protest highlights this strategy in a different context, as a democratic effort to save existing democratic institutions from the overzealous capitalism of the transnational constellation.…”

Section: Conclusion: Politics Potentiality and The Contribution Of Iptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Building on his earlier work (Volk, 2015a(Volk, , 2015b, Volk (2019a) highlights how transnational political protests 'enac [t] new political arenas' at a level beyond the nation (2019a: 107). Transnational political protest targets what he fittingly terms the 'transnational constellation' -that is, 'the result of the political foundation of a global financial capitalist operating space … maintained by the interaction of single states, policy-and issue-specific government networks, the transnational cooperation of authorities, IOs and, importantly, by private organizations' (Volk, 2019a(Volk, : 104, 2019b. This mode of rule is not a formally constituted world government but an assemblage-like constellation that nevertheless can be resisted by distinctly transnational enactment of political spaces.…”

Section: Resistance Disobedience or Constituent Power? -Disentanglimentioning

confidence: 99%

Potentiality, political protest and constituent power: A response to the special issue

Murphy

2019

Emergent forms of political protest and constitution often provide limit cases for their contemporary theoretical models, and transnational protest movements from Occupy to Democracy in Europe 2025 are no exception. The recent special issue of the Journal of International Political Theory offers a number of different conceptual paths towards understanding these developments, revising and refreshing categories like civil disobedience, opposition, resistance, as well as constituent and destituent power. However, the plurality of perspectives in the special issue leads to a certain degree of uncertainty in the use of terms. This response to the special issue begins with a reflection on its major conceptual developments, addresses the missed encounter with Giorgio Agamben’s theory of ‘destituent potential’ and develops a framework for contrasting different theoretical approaches to political protest and constitution through their relation to potentiality. This taxonomy of emergent forms of political protest and constitution complements the substantial theoretical developments undertaken in the special issue by making the important conceptual relationships between them more readily visible. As well, by demonstrating the applicability of potentiality to the study of International Relations, this framework contributes to the project of the theoretical investigation of international politics.

“…Destituent power is meant to result in something new, but not to reproduce what was rendered inoperative in the first place. The goal is to reorganise political life in forms that do not rely on legal and institutional mechanisms (see Volk, 2019).…”

Section: Destituent Power: Constitutional Change Through Contestatorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Destituent power in the European Union: On the limits of a negativistic logic of constitutional politics

Patberg

2018

Since the euro crisis, protest movements present the European Union as a neoliberal hegemony that undermines democracy and prevents progressive reforms. They call for acts of resistance and partial disintegration to force a renegotiation of the treaties. In this article, I ask whether these ‘disruptive’ political strategies can be defended as a democratic practice of constitutional politics. To that end, I turn to the notion of destituent power, according to which opposition to or withdrawal from public authority can function as a legitimate trigger for constitutional change. I systematise the emerging debate on destituent power and discuss the plausibility of competing approaches. I argue that destituent power is best understood as grounded in popular sovereignty. It denotes the right to dismantle constitutional orders without the intention to construct new ones. While this idea supports some of the acts of contestation proposed by European protest movements, it faces a lure towards the jurisgenerative dimension of constituent power. Ultimately, the potential of a purely negativistic logic of constitutional politics is limited.