On the political economy of the transnationalization of popular sovereignty

Abstract

Transnationalization of popular sovereignty is Jürgen Habermas’ answer to the “postnational constellation”. His position of a supranational constitutionalization has been critized from the perspective of popular sovereignty by political theorist Ingeborg Maus. Although from the view of democratic theory of highest interest, this debate has so far focused primarily on articulating prospective institutional and procedural designs or criticizing existing ones but has neglected to sufficiently address the problem of effective democratic access to the economic sphere. The aim of this paper is to strengthen popular sovereignty theory by confronting the two competing positions with insights from political economy on the background of the “new constitutionalism”. We show that Maus’ idea to cut back “new constitutionalism” to the form of international agreements without supranational institutions runs into the same problems of equality between states that Habermas faces with his idea of “global governance without government”. We show also that a further unification of Europe as envisioned by Habermas is undermined by structural obstacles of capitalist economy that Habermas does not take into account. Therefore, both models, although contrary positions, share similar problems. It is our result that popular sovereignty theory must counter legitimatory and socioeconomic challenges simultaneously.

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This manuscript has been presented at the Research Seminar of ARENA, Centre for European Studies in Oslo. We are grateful for comments by the participants, especially Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum, and for comments on earlier drafts by Hans-Jürgen Bieling and Martin Höpner. Translated by Daniela Serra.