The concept of deliberative democracy lies at the heart of this volume, which is a Festschrift to Rainer Schmalz-Bruns. The book Deliberative Kritik - Kritik der Deliberation [deliberative critique and critique of deliberation] is edited by Oliver Flügel-Martinsen, Daniel Gaus, Tanja Hitzel-Cassagnes and Franziska Martinsen and appeared on Springer in September.
The volume is published in German, however the two contributions by ARENA scholars are in English.
Reflexive constitutionalism in crisis
Erik O. Eriksen in his chapter asks what the strong emotional reactions to the EU’s Eurozone crisis management tell us about the normativity of the EU. Why is more expected by the European institutions when collective action is constrained by the politics of European states? The EU has no competence in fiscal matters; it cannot redistribute resources, issue state bonds, print money, and it has no sovereign tax basis. The European Central Bank (ECB) cannot act as a lender of last resort. These competencies rest with the member states. This is all well known and a result of member states’ unwillingness to surrender sovereignty and grant more powers to the Union. All the same this has not prevented social groups, political parties and intellectuals from demanding more resolute action from the EU to curb the crisis.
Cosmopolitan constitutionalism
John Erik Fossum and Agustín José Menéndez contributes the chapter 'Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism: Pie-in-the sky or Path to the Future?'. Cosmopolitanism has had a long career as a political theory, and as a programme of political action, from the early accounts of the Sophists and the most articulated Roman political thinkers, to Immanuel Kant’s perpetual peace project and the European Resistance’s drive to European and world federalism. Diogenes’ claim that he was a “citizen of the world” still resonates loud and clear, both as a practical and as a theoretical claim.
About the book (in German)
Kaum ein Konzept in der jüngeren politischen Theoriegeschichte kann auf eine solch steile und, wie sich mittlerweile gezeigt hat, auch langanhaltende Karriere zurückblicken wie das der Deliberation. Nachdem der Begriff der „deliberativen Demokratie“ bei Besette (1980) seine erste Verwendung fand, und über die Vermittlung bei Sunstein (1985) schließlich von Cohen (1989) erstmals in dem heute gebräuchlichen Sinn des Ideals eines umfassenden, öffentlichen Diskurses genutzt wurde, erfreut sich dieses Konzept spätestens seit dem deliberative turn im Verlauf der 1990er Jahre im deutsch- und englischsprachigen Raum eines ungebrochenen Interesses in der Politischen Theorie.
Full info
Erik O. Eriksen
Reflexive Constitutionalism in Crisis
John Erik Fossum and Agustín José Menéndez
'Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism: Pie-in-the sky or Path to the Future?'
In: Deliberative Kritik - Kritik der Deliberation: Festschrift für Rainer Schmalz-Bruns
Oliver Flügel-Martinsen, Daniel Gaus, Tanja Hitzel-Cassagnes and Franziska Martinsen (eds)
Springer, 2014
ISBN: 978-3-658-02859-6