Europe: from emancipation to empowerment

Marx is dead. But so is Hayek. With neoliberalism crumbling, Europeans are beginning to wonder what it is that is really wrong with the current European Union. The paper proposes the following answer: To this day, European integration has not been a process of emancipation. This shortcoming, however, is not written on the Union’s face. It requires, pursuant to best psychological traditions, a careful analysis of symptoms. One indication of the absence of emancipation is, indeed, the Union’s rhetorical embrace of empowerment

Antituristic movements in Europe

Turizam se u 21. stoljeću, uz IT-industriju, svakako ubraja u gospodarsku granu s najbrže rastućim trendovima. Kao i svaka druga pojava u geografskom prostoru i razvoj turizma imao je svoj evolutivini tok. Važeći koncept razvoja turizma koji je prešao u sustav masovnog turizma postao je s demografskog i ekološkog stajališta dugoročno neodrživ. Masovni turizam i eksplozija infrastrukturne izgradnje ugrozila je ne samo urbanistički i životni prostor već i način života, opstojnost i identitet poznatih destinacija. Današnji model razvoja turizma zapravo izbacuje ljude iz susjedstva i bitno šteti atraktivnosti i opstojnosti okoliša. U najugroženjim destinacijama dolazi i do uličnih protesta lokalnog stanovništa, pa neki govore o pojavi antiturizma, overturizma i turizmofobije. U tom procesu akcelerativnog razvoja turizma prednjače europske zemlje, poradi viskoih vrijednosti privlačnih faktora s kojima raspolažu europske turističke destinsaije. Godine 2018. u međunarodnom turističkom prometu u Europi je zabilježeno 713 miljuna dolazaka, što čini čak 49, 2 % svjetskog turističkog prometa. Pojave antiturizma najizrazitije su u nekim europskim turističkim destinacijama, u kojima je masovni turizam prešao granice ljudskih, infrastrukturnih i ekoloških kapaciteta. Zadaća je ovoga rada prikazati glavne čimbenike antiturizma na primjeru tri vrlo ugrožene destinacije – Barcelone, Venecije i Dubrovnika. Preplavljena sve većim brojem turista, potaknuta jeftinim letovima i platformama kao što je Airbnb, Barcelona je nezadovoljna. Sam broj posjetitelja povećava cijenu najamnine, gura stanovnike iz centra grada Jedan od čimbenika koji pospješuje antiturizam u Veneciji je i dolazak enormnog broja brodova za krstarenje. U Dubrovniku danas u Starom gradu živi samo 1.557 ljudi, što je mnogo manje od 5.000 koliko ih je živjelo 1991. godine. Domovi i stanovi predani su turističkom smještaju koji uništava svaki osjećaj zajednice i povećava cijene nekretnina.Tourism, along with the IT industry, is definitely one of the fastest growing industries in the 21st century. Like any other phenomenon in the geographical area, tourism development has had its evolutionary course. The valid concept of tourism development that has shifted to a mass tourism system has become unsustainable from a demographic and environmental point of view. Mass tourism and the explosion of infrastructural construction endangered not only urban and living space, but also the way of life, existence and identity of known destinations. Today's model of tourism development actually drives people out of the neighborhood and significantly damages the attractiveness and viability of the environment. In the most vulnerable destinations, there are street protests by the locals, and some speak of antitourism, overtourism and tourismophobia. European countries take the lead in this process of accelerated tourism development, due to the high values of attractive factors at the disposal of European tourist destinations. In year 2018. international tourist traffic in Europe has recorded 713 million arrivals, accounting for as much as 49.2% of world tourist traffic. The phenomenon of anti-tourism is most pronounced in some European tourist destinations, where mass tourism has crossed the boundaries of human, infrastructural and ecological capacities. The aim of this paper is to present the main factors of antitourism on the example of three very endangered destinations - Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik. Overflowing with increasing numbers of tourists, fueled by cheap flights and platforms such as Airbnb, Barcelona is dissatisfied. The number of visitors increases the cost of rent, pushes residents out of the city center One of the factors that boosts anti-tourism in Venice is the arrival of an enormous number of cruise ships. Today, only 1,557 people live in Dubrovnik's Old Town, down from 5,000 in 1991. Homes and apartments are committed to tourist accommodations that destroy any sense of community and increase property prices

Authoritarian Liberalism

Angesichts der Reformen in der Eurozone greift dieser Beitrag den Begriff des „Autoritären Liberalismus“ wieder auf. Er wurde von Hermann Heller im Jahre 1933 verwendet, um die internen Zusammenhang zwischen dem ökonomischen Liberalismus und einem „starken Staat“ zu beschreiben. Dieser Begriff ist zur Erlangung eines angemessenen Verständnisses des neuen Regierens in der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion heuristisch fruchtbar. Es ist sinnvoll von autoritärem Regieren auch dann zu sprechen, wenn diese nicht die äußeren Anzeichen staatlicher Repression trägt. Zwei Seiten des autoritären Liberalismus lassen sich unterscheiden. Während die eine Seite viel von Autorität an sich hält, sieht die andere Seite das autoritäre Regieren als etwas an, das gut für die Wirtschaft ist. Der Beitrag spekuliert abschließend darüber, ob die europäische Integration deswegen erfolgreich gewesen sein mag, weil sie geschickt zwischen beiden Seiten hin und her wechselte. Jedenfalls sollte es uns beunruhigen, wenn die europäische Integration sowohl profunde als auch zufällige autoritäre Züge trägt. In light of the reforms undertaken for the sake of the Euro, the article revisits the concept authoritarian liberalism that was introduced in 1933 by the German public law scholar Hermann Heller. This notion seeks to capture the liaison between the “strong state” and economic liberalism. The article suggests that this notion can be fruitfully used to designate the new governance of economic and monetary union. It argues, particularly, that it makes sense to speak of an authoritarian style of governance even if the latter does not wear vestiges of outright repression. Two different faces of authoritarian liberalism can be distinguished: one that looks more towards authoritarianism and another one that views authoritarian rule as a managerial strategy that is good for the economy. The article then speculates whether the European Union has been, indeed, successful because it shifts between the two. Disturbingly, there may be something deeply as well as more accidentally authoritarian about European integration.

Paradoxical Parallels in the American and German Abortion Decisions

In this Article, Professors Levy and Somek engage in a careful comparative analysis of the leading constitutional abortion decisions in the United States and Germany. This analysis is occasioned by the remarkable convergence of the abortion regulation regimes of the two countries, notwithstanding the diametrically opposed starting points of the United States Supreme Court and the German Constitutional Court. While Roe v. Wade started from the premise that the fetus had no rights and that the woman’s right to privacy encompassed a right to choose abortion free from government burdens, the First German Abortion Decision established that the constitutional guarantee of a right to life encompassed the unborn child and required the state to criminalize abortion. Nonetheless, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and the Second German Abortion Decision, the respective Courts accommodated nearly identical abortion regimes in which the mother is allowed to have an abortion early in the pregnancy and for specified causes, but the state structures the context of that decision in an effort to persuade her to carry the child to term. The reasoning process by which both Courts have moderated their abortion jurisprudence exhibits three “paradoxical parallels.” First, in Roe and The First German Decision, the Courts constructed a clear hierarchy of constitutional rights to legitimate their involvement in the abortion issue, only to reintroduce previously subordinated interests later in the analysis. Because the reintroduction of these interests is inconsistent with the Courts’ constitutional hierarchy of rights and remains largely unexplained, there is a disjunction between the legal framework for and moral balance of the respective decisions. Second, in Casey and The Second German Abortion Decision, both Courts exploited this disjunction to claim fidelity to precedent while accommodating compromise abortion regimes. Ultimately, however, these new legal frameworks did not rest on any independent constitutional foundation, but rather on the moral balance of the earlier decisions. But even the respective Court’s claims to have retained the moral balance of the earlier decisions remained unpersuasive, because their new legal frameworks effectively redefined the moral balance. Third, both Courts reasoned that the locus of the abortion decision has not changed under the new abortion regimes; i.e., that the decision remained with the mother in Casey and with the state in The Second German Abortion Decision. In both cases, however, this reasoning oversimplified the nature of the abortion decision and ignored the ways in which the state’s context-shaping role has, in fact, changed. Because this change is likely to have a significant impact on some substantial number of women, the locus of decision has changed. Ultimately, Professors Levy and Somek assess the implications of these paradoxical parallels for the role of the courts in modern society, suggesting that the example of abortion illustrates the limits of the courts’ ability to oppose powerful social forces and the loss of institutional capital that may result from becoming involved in controversial moral questions. This is not to say that the courts should abandon constitutional principle to popular sentiment, but rather that courts must be conscious of their own limits

Unpopular sovereignty?

Popular sovereignty was presented in modern constitutional discourse as a mode of collective action. It was supposedly manifest in the power to constitute, control and dismantle governments. Important strands of contemporary constitutional theory, notably legal constitutionalism and deliberative democracy, have taken leave of this tradition. They have severed the connection between sovereignty and action. What remains of popular sovereignty is fundamental rights and values, or dispersed networks of deliberation. This is based on the the idea that the place of power is ‘empty’ and legitimised on the principle of including ‘All-Affected-Interests’. The very concept of sovereignty thus becomes unpopular. This contribution aims to re-establish the link between popular sovereignty and action by examining sovereignty's emancipatory telos, its majoritarian mode of operation and its dependence on political citizenship