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Politics as Realitätsprinzip in the debate on constitutions and fragmented orders: remarks ‘On constitutions and fragmented orders’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2020

Xymena Kurowska Open the ORCID record for Xymena Kurowska [Opens in a new window]
Xymena Kurowska*
Affiliation:
Central European University, Vienna, Austria
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: KurowskaX@ceu.edu
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Abstract

The promise of constitutionalisation is, according to Kratochwil, the existential comfort that comes from having a coherent framework for judgement and action. This apparent epistemological confidence comes at the price of parting with a realistic assessment of the concrete situation, and it conceals that politics operate across all levels all the time. This paper critiques this vision and points beyond the idea of exhaustive frameworks. Figuring out contextually appropriate configurations of constitutionalisation and fragmentation allows for greater agency and pluralism. A more fundamental tension in Kratochwil's work remains, however, his falling back on the abstract to articulate the experiential.

Keywords

Constitutionalisationcontextfragmentationsubversiontheory
Type
Symposium: In the Midst of Theory and Practice: Edited by Hannes Peltonen and Knut Traisbach
Information
International Theory , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , November 2021 , pp. 538 - 545
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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