Provincialising Constitutional Pluralism

Abstract

This paper adapts the idea of constitutional pluralism outside the EU, its ‘regional comfort zone’. Starting with claims of ultimate constitutional authority in the former Yugoslavia, it offers an account of provincialised constitutional pluralism—pluralism marked by the recursive proliferation of the claims of ultimate authority, as well as the external constituent presence that manages them. Provincialising constitutional pluralism means not only describing its travails in the periphery, but also situating it within theoretical debates, in normative and constitutional theory. What emerges from this encounter is the respect for the recursive proliferation of constitutional pluralism, and a suggestion of a ‘self-ironic’ ethos on the part of the radical challengers to the status quo. Finally, provincialised constitutional pluralism speaks back to the ‘core’: those who fight for it ought to have tools at their disposal to advance their vision at the core's sites of political decision making.