Constituent power and its institutions

At least since the French Revolution, the idea of constituent power has been used to indicate the power the people have to create legal-political orders. As such, the history of constituent power is deeply tied to the principle of popular power and, through it, to the history of democracy, to its theory and to its practice. Not only constituent power points at the process through which a democratic polity is instituted via procedures of constitution-making. It also acts as a reminder that the source of constitutional normativity lies in the will of the people. As a result, constituent power functions as a ‘bridge concept’ between the sphere of law and that of politics. This has, traditionally, resulted in two separate fields of academic scholarship. On the one side, are those who reflect on constituent power to study the legal implications of the idea. They tend to focus on the workings of constituent assemblies and on the status of constitutional norms, their amendment procedures and their relationship to secondary law-making. This approach highlights the centrality of the idea of constituent power to the workings of the legal system. On the other side, are those scholars who look at constituent power to emphasise its political dimension. This is often part of a project of constitutional contestation, whereby constituent power is presented as an absolute popular power that can never be reduced to legal norms and that, as a result, exists alongside the constitutional system and is always potentially capable of overturning it. In this critical exchange, we aim to raise a different set of questions and ask how the idea of constituent power informs our way of thinking about some fundamental institutions of the modern democratic state: constitutional courts, legislatures, federalism, central banks and the referendum

Sieyès versus Bicameralism

AbstractBicameralism is traditionally considered necessary to the principle of the limitation of power and, as such, a key feature of the liberal constitutional state. Yet the history of the French Revolution reveals that this has not always been the case and that bicameralism's relationship to liberal constitutionalism is more complex than is traditionally assumed. This article will discuss how the Abbé Sieyès, one of the founding fathers of modern constitutionalism, rejected bicameralism not only because it was contrary to the revolutionary principle of equality, but also because it did not actually succeed at limiting power. Even worse, bicameralism would threaten the constitutional system by forcing the legislative power into procedural impasses that would eventually open the way to despotism. Putting Sieyès's claims in historical perspective, the paper aims to offer some historical nuance and insights into bicameralism's relationship to liberal constitutionalism.</jats:p

The Italian state, its regions and the virus

Italian politics has always been characterised by deep regional divides. While the north and centre are well integrated into the European economy, southern regions struggle to keep up their productivity and employment levels. Although this divide has a long history, the Covid-19 crisis is set to worsen the inequality separating the two parts of the country. In this article, I first discuss how the coronavirus pandemic immediately assumed a regional dimension, which was reflected not only in the geography of the contagion, but also in how the central state struggled to manage the contrasting demands coming from northern and southern regions. Second, I argue that, although the north has been the epicentre of the health crisis, it is the south that is set to pay the highest economic and social price for the lockdown measures. I conclude suggesting that, while the Covid crisis has confirmed the salience of regional divides for Italian politics, it might also strengthen autonomist forces