Quod omnes tangit: Transnational Constitutions Without Democracy?. (18th July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Teubner, Gunther
• Is Part Of: Journal of law and society. Volume 45(2018)Supplement 1
• Page Start: S5
• Page End: S29
• Publication Date: 2018-07-18
• Subjects: Sociological jurisprudence -- Periodicals; 340
• DOI: 10.1111/jols.12102
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-323X

Abstract

Abstract : Critics of global constitutionalism rightly point to a democratic deficit of transnational regimes. They base their critique on a time‐honoured principle of democracy: the identity of authors and affected people is the universal core of democracy. However, in its long winding history, the democratic principle had always been recontextualized. Such a recontextualization of democracy which requires generalization as well as respecification is needed again today under the conditions of transnationalization. As for generalization, the article's main thesis is: political representation, the traditional concept of democracy for the nation state, is replaced by self‐contestation, which needs to be firmly institutionalized in transnational regimes. As for respecification, the main thesis is: self‐contestation cannot be established in a one‐size‐fits‐all approach, but in multiple variations that reflect the extreme epistemic diversity among issue‐specific transnational regimes. The constitutional principle of 'epistemic subsidiarity' may open new perspectives for developing different procedures of self‐contestation for different regimes.