The Citizen of Many Worlds: Societal Constitutionalism and the Antinomies of Democracy

Abstract

This article argues that Gunther Teubner's theory of societal constitutionalism can be used to examine the realities of citizenship in contemporary society. Teubner's thought illuminates how the rise of global law has directed classical practices of citizenship – claims to rights and participation in law making – away from centralized political institutions, and located them in distinct functional spheres. On this basis, we see that the integration of the democratic citizen only evolved as society assumed an acentric sectoral design, and we observe that the core processes of national integration only approached completion in a post-national constellation. However, it is also argued here that the contemporary figure of the citizen appears, not as a figure that contradicts, but as a figure that arises directly from the classical form of national citizenship. This fact may be obscured by Teubner's emphasis on societal constitutionalism as a normative construct that emerges beyond the state.