‘Deliberative Constitutional Politics’

• Published date: 01 July 2005
• Date: 01 July 2005
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2005.00266.x
• Author: John Erik Fossum,Carlos Closa

‘Deliberative Constitutional Politics’

EU constitutional politics are the set of procedures through which the EU adopts and

modifies its fundamental norms. It encompasses several stages, from preparation to

ratification. Preparation of the EU Constitution differed significantly from previous

Treaty ammendment rounds, if only because the convening of the Convention on the

Future of Europe reflected a certain will to move constitution-making away from inter-

governmental bargaining, and towards a model of ‘deliberative politics’.

The group of articles gathered under this symposium on Deliberative constitutional

politics stems from a workshop organised within the 5th framework project on Citi-

zenship and Democratic Legitimacy in the EU (CIDEL). The workshop focused on the

procedure that had been adopted for the first stages of the process of drafting the EU

Constitution, with particular emphasis on the Convention on the Future of Europe.

The workshop had two foci:

• to explain the empirical nature of the unfolding practice of constitutional

politics, with the Convention as its main but not exclusive focus;

• to provide a normative assessment of the constitutional process, based on delib-

erative democratic standards.

The following contributions form a coherent whole in that they all assess the Conven-

tion from a deliberative democratic perspective. At the same time, they provide assess-

ments of a fairly wide range of the most relevant aspects of the Convention. John Erik

Fossum and Agustín Menéndez examine the process of constitution making as a set of

distinct and identifiable stages. These form the backbone of a normative model of delib-

erative constitution making. This model is then assessed against a formalised version

of the IGC model of constitution making. After that, the Laeken Convention process

is assessed in relation to the normative model so as to establish whether it represented

an improvement upon the IGC model, in normative and empirical terms. Carlos Closa

discusses the anticipated capability of the Constitution to strengthen the normative

basis of the EU. Both the deliberative process and the outcome (the Constitution) may

reinforce the legitimacy of the EU: a more (although still constrained) deliberative

process of constitution making has emerged and, above all, the EU constitution may

become the anchor for EU citizens’ through its fostering of some kind of constitutional

patriotism. Paul Magnette assesses the deliberative quality of the Convention, in light

of its core result, summarized as a ‘simplification’ exercise. He assesses whether the

Convention could be seen as a mere continuation of the system in place or as an impor-

tant change in terms of the legitimacy of the EU. Lastly, Ben Crum, in his contribu-

tion, looks at the Convention’s contribution to the forging of one of the preconditions

of deliberative democracy, namely a set of representative institutions. He draws on

Robert Dahl’s criteria for representative democracy and evaluates the Convention’s

work and its final proposal in relation to these.

Carlos Closa and John Erik Fossum

Madrid, March 2005

European Law Journal, Vol.11, No. 4, July 2005, pp. 379.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

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