Back to the future? Crisis of constitutional democracy and traces of a Bolshevik past

Abstract

Today, the world over a debate is going on regarding the usefulness of the forms of democracy that different states have adopted over time. The meaning and associations with the concept of democracy and its attendant political forms have changed at critical points in history. These changes have been attributed both to, evolutionary and revolutionary impulses that have expanded or transformed the ways in which democracy and the relationship of its political forms with the people had been primarily understood. The most enduring association of democracy with freedom and equality is a historical product that came into being with the onset of capitalism with its philosophical basis in political liberalism. The dominance of capitalist liberal democracy has given such stability to this association that “democracy” can no longer be imagined in any other political imaginary and that its associated meanings of freedom and equality are self-evident and inherent not only to the concept itself but to capitalism. The paper interrogates such ahistorical understanding of the concept of democracy and recuperates the radical history of contentions over its meanings and its most abiding political form i. e. constitutional democracy. The transcendence of national boundaries towards a global citizenship has put a strain on the fundamental operative terrain of constitutional democracy. The values of freedom and equality laid out in the Constitution premised on a liberal contract are more undermined today, than ever before with transnational capital and global citizenship breaking the bounds of constitutional purview. This has brought the concept and political forms of constitutional democracy into a state of crisis today. Can re-looking at the past traces of suppressed contentions over the meaning and forms of democracy give us any insight as to how we can work through the constitutional crisis today? If the meaning and associations with democracy is not eternal but historical, can we bring it them within other political imaginaries?