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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
This comment engages with Somek's account for the cosmopolitan constitution for two distinct purposes. It first builds on its inherent ambivalence to argue that hitherto Europe has experienced at least two different versions of the cosmopolitan constitution. Whereas in the formative period of the process of European integration, the cosmopolitan constitution manifested itself prevailingly in its more benign and democracy-enhancing political face, since the end of the 1970s it has developed a more controversial and democracy-inhibiting administrative profile. Secondly, the comment rejects as potentially regressive the proposal of redressing the biases inherent in the contemporary legal and political order by reviving the idea of a Machiavellian mixed constitution. To fulfill the promise of emancipation inspiring constitutionalism, the cosmopolitan constitution cannot segregate in separate institutions ordinary citizens and a market elite. Rather, the cosmopolitan constitution should be re-imagined with a view to reassert its original democracy-enhancing spirit and adapt it to the evolving circumstances of economic and political interdependence.
1 See Somek, Alexander, The Cosmopolitan Constitution 25 (2014) (explaining that the cosmopolitan constitution can be defined in slightly different terms as “a national constitution that submits its operation to the supervision of international peer institutions.”).Google Scholar
2 Somek has confessed his Eurocentrism. See A. Somek, A proposito di “The Cosmopolitan Constitution” di Alexander Somek, 4 Rivista Trimestrale di Diritto Pubblico 927 (2017).Google Scholar
3 Somek, supra note 1, at 245.Google Scholar
4 Id. at 176–89.Google Scholar
5 Id. at 19–20.Google Scholar
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7 See id. at 248–57 (mocking this argument as the “darling dogma of bourgeois Europeanists”).Google Scholar
8 Id. at 251.Google Scholar
9 Id. at 258–59.Google Scholar
10 Id. at 234.Google Scholar
11 Id. at 231.Google Scholar
12 Id. at 202.Google Scholar
13 Id. at 270–71.Google Scholar
14 Id. at 231.Google Scholar
15 Id. at 160–61.Google Scholar
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20 Id. at 242–43.Google Scholar
21 Id. at 242.Google Scholar
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26 The democracy-enhancing and democracy-inhibiting character of multilateral international arrangement is discussed in: R. Kehoane, S. Macedo & A. Moravcsik, Democracy Enhancing Multilateralism, 63 Int'l Org. 1 (2009).Google Scholar
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49 This narrative is grounded on significant constitutional developments, such as the shift to qualified majority voting, the expansion of EU competences, the increased power of the European Parliament, and the adoption of the iconography of Constitutionalism 2.0 (fundamental rights, social values inserted in EU horizontal clauses, and European citizenship). What is probably missing in this account is the persisting influence of the original identity traits of supranational law and, in particular, its enduring regulatory profile. For a more elaborate version of this argument see M. Dani, The Rise of the Supranational Executive and the Post-Political Drift of European Public Law 24 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 399–427 (2017).Google Scholar
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71 Id. at 5–8.Google Scholar
72 Id. at Chapter 2.Google Scholar
73 Id. at 16.Google Scholar
74 Id. at 13.Google Scholar
75 Id. at 15.Google Scholar
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77 An example on this point is offered by the need of supranational policies to deal with the refugee crisis and, more broadly, immigration.Google Scholar
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