The paper examines how efforts to design a policy regime governed by rules may lead
on the contrary to recurrent and far-reaching political discretion. Where reorientations
of policy are formally excluded, as in the ordo-liberal perspective,
unforeseen situations will typically provoke last-minute unconventional actions,
whether in the form of temporary exceptions to the existing framework or moves to
constitute a new one. In order to preserve the ideal of a rule-governed order, such
actions must be cast as extraordinary measures for exceptional times – as the politics
of emergency, that is. Whereas modern political thought of various stripes tends to
defend constitutional rules as the condition of policy discretion, here one sees the
converse scenario of constitutional discretion pursued in the name of policy rules.
These themes are elaborated in connection with the ongoing crisis of the European
Union
