Constitutional self-negation in Venezuela: Problematizing constitutionalism’s internalization of the theory of constituent power

Abstract

Abstract The article looks at the constitutional underpinnings of the political crisis that has unfolded in Venezuela (around the competing claims to the presidency by Juan Guaidó and Nicolás Maduro), in an effort to understand the structural elements that have enabled that crisis. The central argument of the article is that Venezuela presents an example of “self-negating constitutionalism.” A self-negating constitution is one that, by negating its own position as the exclusive, self-contained source of democratic authorization for a given polity, ultimately ceases to serve as the last instance for the adjudication of institutional conflicts, including conflicts about the proper locus of representation of the “sovereign” demos, thereby undermining the constitutional structure in its entirety and replacing the rule of law with extralegal power as the mechanism for the resolution of political disputes. As the paper will show, this is precisely what the Venezuelan Constitution has done by outsourcing the competency to “transform the state” to an institution supposedly authorized by the people’s “original constituent power.”