Postnational Constitutionalisation in the New Europe

Information on the book: This book explores a wide array of preconditions, procedures, legitimacy questions and prospects of the new constitutional process that is evolving in the European Union since the Laeken Summit of December 2001. »Postnational Constitutionalisation« characterises this historically contingent, yet substantively limited process that does not necessarily intimate the emergence of a »United States of Europe« or a »Federal Republic of Europe« which replaces member state constitutions. Instead, it questions the premises of the hidden process of constitutionalisation that in the EU has thus far been largely in the hands of the courts and executive agencies, at the expense of legislatures and the public.
Postnational constitutionalisation draws on more inclusive, deliberative und public communication, thus revealing potentials for political conflict as well as new sources of consensus building. Being partly decoupled from the member states, this historically open project of constitution-building depends all the more on civil society and citizenship participation. Contributing authors are Furio Cerutti, Marek A. Cichocki, Josef Falke, Stefan Garstecki, Thomas Giegerich, Ines Hartwig, Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann, Ulrike Liebert, Andreas Maurer, Jürgen Neyer, Anne Peters, Johannes Pollak, Lothar Probst, Joscha Schmierer, Antje Wiener, and Janna Wolff. The book also includes a CD-Rom with a comparative synopsis of constitutional treaty changes, as well as all relevant constitutional documents in German, English, French and Polish.