The Changing Preconditions of Law and Politics. Multilevel Governance and Mutually Interdependent, Reflexive and Competing Institutions in the EU and the EEA

The communicative systems of law and politics which have been vital parts of the structures and processes of democracy, have evolved in their present forms over the last two hundred years. They have been inherently connected to the boundaries and the definitions of the nation states and of sovereignty. Current changes of substantial as well as of legal and procedural character are however - over time - dramatically changing the premises of the nationally bounded communicative systems of law and politics. In the paper I will discuss these two ways in which the previously nationally based and defined legislative processes of communication have been challenged and changed, namely: - first the doubling of institutions following supranationality and the increased competition and reflexivity among the institutions, and second the increased globalization and uncertainty of many of the legal discourses in the supranational institutions. The study of law and politics must henceforth focus more on the substantial forms of argumentation, the discourses evolving in the fields regulated by law and politics and consequently on how meaning is produced.