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  3. Democratic Crisis and Global Constitutional Law
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
February 2021
Print publication year:
2021
Online ISBN:
9781108865869
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108865869
Subjects:
Socio-Legal Studies, Law, Comparative Law, Political Sociology, Sociology
Series:
Global Law Series
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Book description

Democratic Crisis and Global Constitutional Law explains the current weakness of democratic polities by examining antinomies in constitutional democracy and its theoretical foundations. This book argues that democracy is usually analysed in a theoretical lens that is not adequately sensitive to its historical origins. The author proposes a new sociological framework for understanding democracy and its constitutional preconditions, stressing the linkage between classical patterns of democratic citizenship and military processes and arguing that democratic stability at the national level relies on the formation of robust normative systems at the international level. On this basis, he argues that democracy is frequently exposed to crisis because the normative terms in which it is promoted and justified tend to simplify its nature. These terms create a legitimising space in which anti-democratic movements, typically with a populist emphasis, can take shape and flourish.

Reviews

'Now that the reinvention of democracy appears to be one of the most pressing public issues, especially in the face of rising populism, Christopher Thornhill’s latest book is likely to bring about a radical renewal of the arguments. The author carries out an impressive long-term intellectual work, interrogating constitutions - as the foundational institutional arrangements making human togetherness possible - in late modernity. On this ground, he now invites us to approach - and to defend - democracy, taking it, less as the fruit of enlightened voluntary action, taking place in national polities, than essentially as the result of a global societal evolution. He also invites us to pay special attention, in the reconstruction of this evolution, to those institutions - national and global - where democratic subjectivity concretely developed. By giving emphasis, in this reconstruction, to the intriguing historical sequence of militarization and demilitarization of citizenship, the book offers a timely, energetic, and provocative input in an urgent and indispensable debate.'

Pierre Guibentif - Dinâmia'CET-ISCTE, Lisbon, Portugal, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris-Saclay, France

‘This brilliant book revolutionizes many well established assumptions. First, there are no old democracies. Until about 1950 the citizen of law was constituted by the citizen of war. The bonded man became free at the price of national service. Universal suffrage was rigidly coupled to universal conscription. Instead of democracy the people got authoritarian populism. Second, only after 1950 was equal participation of all sexes, nationalities and social classes realized. Third, it was not national sovereignty but transnationally constituted human rights that made democracy. After reading this outstanding book, we know that the only cure against populism is more global constitutional law.’

Hauke Brunkhorst - European University Flensburg, Germany

‘… offering a comprehensive explanation of the contemporary phenomenon of populism, Thornhill delves into the origins of the modern state and traces the formation and evolution of the sovereign political subject - citizen - over the centuries until today.’

Katarzyna Krzyżanowska Source: Jindal Global Law Review

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