Resilience, Language, and Democracy: Constitutional Identity and Continuity in Times of Crisis – Case Study of Finland and Montenegro

Abstract

This article showcases the heuristic utility of the concepts of resilience and constitutional identity in explaining democratic endurance during societal crises. Societal resilience depends on sustaining constitutional identity through adaptive, inclusive narratives, with language serving as the medium of collective memory and self-reinterpretation. This study explores whether linguistic pluralism fortifies or erodes democratic endurance at critical junctures. A structured focused comparison examines Finland (post-independence) and Montenegro (post-independence), two states marked by linguistic diversity yet divergent official-language regimes, drawing on constitutional texts, historical records, and theoretical lenses from Bergson’s durée, Frankl’s logotherapy, and Rosenfeld’s constitutional identity framework. Findings show that Finland’s bilingual constitutional model—treating both national languages as co-equal within a civic “we”—preserved legitimacy and cohesion across wars and geopolitical tensions. In contrast, Montenegro’s elevation of a single, minority, and symbolically charged official language contributed to lasting identitarian dissonance and to the weakening of the civic constitutional project, even in peacetime. Inclusive linguistic policy thus sustains interpretive freedom and adaptive continuity; symbolic uniformity, however, rigidifies identity, amplifies dissonance, and undermines resilience