Supranational constitutional politics and the method of rational reconstruction

Patberg, Markus

doi:10.1177/0191453714530987

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Nonetheless, Habermas now describes the EU as “sharing constituting power between EU citizens and European peoples”; much of his recent defense of it revolves around an attempt to make sense of its mixed pouvoir constituant (Habermas, 2012: 28). His efforts have recently inspired others—most impressively, the Hamburg political theorists Peter Niesen and Markus Patberg—to rethink the idea of constituent power in a more “global” direction (Niesen, 2017, 2019; Patberg, 2014, 2017, 2019; see also Lang, 2017). As Niesen fair-mindedly observes, “[i]t is not immediately obvious which agents could take on the role of bearers of constituent powers in post-national orders, and it may be risky to stretch the notion too far” (Niesen, 2017: 1).…”

Section: Habermas Postnational Constituent Power and Civil Disobedimentioning

confidence: 99%

Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

Scheuerman

2018

Journal of International Political Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, modes of political illegality (e.g. conscientious objection, resistance, revolution). The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic (postnational) constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of his reformist agenda for the European Union not only breaks with his earlier understandable skepticism about the idea but also risks trimming the admirably ambitious sails of his radical democratic interpretation of civil disobedience.

show abstract

Section: Habermas Postnational Constituent Power and Civil Disobedimentioning

confidence: 99%

Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

Scheuerman

2018

Journal of International Political Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To take one example, Jürgen Habermas (e.g. 1999 , 2012 ) adopts his immanent method of rational reconstruction to theorize EU legitimacy ( Patberg, 2014 ). After establishing normative fragments and particulars found in political practices, he reconstructs the norms to which these agents should be committed.…”

Section: The Normative Literature On Eu Legitimacy: a Methodological mentioning

confidence: 99%

From Practice to Principle and Back: Applying a New Realist Method to the European Union’s Democratic Deficit

Beetz

2017

Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The prospect of a Brexit illustrates that the European Union’s legitimacy deficit can have far-reaching political consequences. In normative political theory, realists take a keen interest in questions of legitimacy. Building on Bernard Williams’ realist writings, I propose a two-step method of normative political theorization. Each step contains both a practice-sensitive phase and a practice-insensitive phase. First, the conceptualization of a norm should draw on conceptual resources available to agents within their historical circumstances. Second, the prescriptions that follow from this norm should take into account whether political order can be maintained. Applying this method to the European Union’s democratic deficit yields, first, based on public opinion research, the norm of European deep diversity and, second, a set of prescriptions for a demoicratic confederacy. Thereby, I demonstrate that this realist method is able to yield political theories distinct from other philosophical approaches. Moreover, I contribute a realist theory to the normative literature in European Union studies.

show abstract

“…While destituent power receives passing mentions in Lorey’s (2019) article and Niesen’s (2019a) introduction, only in Markus Patberg’s (2019) contribution do we find a systematic treatment of the concept. Moving beyond his extensive prior work on supranational constitutionalism and constituent power at that higher level (Patberg, 2014, 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2018), his discussion of destituent power lays out a series of definitional categories ultimately interested in the abilities (1) of states to exercise civil disobedience within supranational institutions and (2) of popular sovereignty movements to articulate themselves in a non-constituent manner. In an effort to treat destituent power as an umbrella for multiple concepts, Patberg (2019) defines it broadly as ‘a category according to which opposition to or withdrawal from the regulatory grasp of public authority can function as a legitimate trigger for constitutional change’ (2019: 83).…”

Section: Resistance Disobedience or Constituent Power? – Disentanglmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Murphy

2019

Journal of International Political Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Supranational constitutional politics and the method of rational reconstruction

Cited by 15 publications

References 20 publications

Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

From Practice to Principle and Back: Applying a New Realist Method to the European Union’s Democratic Deficit

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About