Postnational Constellation Research Articles

National Philology, Politics and Science. Notes on the birth of Germanistics out of the spirit of the nineteenth century

This article focuses on the nationalistic turn that swept across the political and cultural life of nineteenth century Germany by looking into two events that are seldom brought together: the Germanists’ Assembly in Frankfurt, in 1846, and Marx and Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party, published just two years later. It explores the tension between nationalism and internationalism that runs through both events and that is still vividly present in our contemporary, after all, not so «Postnational Constellation».

Globalisation, postnationalism and Australia

Postnational institutions and identities are products of globalisation. How far along the ‘postnational’ road the world has travelled is debatable. In the early 2000s Habermas referred to an emerging ‘post national constellation’. While the nation-state is still an important institutional form, postnational identities and experiences challenge the boundaries of nation-states, and also national identities. Cosmopolitanism as an outlook, set of predispositions and practices is often seen as postnational, and celebrated as such, since it implies the embrace of humanity beyond nation. To what extent have national identities (as opposed to other kinds of identities) been threatened, undermined or superseded by postnational identities? To what extent is the postnational a utopian hope for a cosmopolitan future, and to what extent is the postnational already upon us – whether we recognise it or not? What are the most convincing examples of postnationalism? This article addresses such questions, with a focus on Australia.

On Legitimate Sovereignty and Global Responsibility

The concept of sovereignty implies the self-determination of political power. It does not entail, however, any assumption either about whether this power is legitimate and, if so, how its legitimation is realized, or about the extension of the power that is supposed to be sovereign. Thus, political power could be perfectly indifferent to democratic legitimacy or to global injustice, while being nevertheless recognized as sovereign. Since the concept of sovereignty was originally developed within the context of a paradigm of social, political and legal order according to which the well-ordered society is limited in its extension and governed through a top-down chain of authority, it is not surprising that questions like democratic legitimacy and global justice were simply ignored by its supporters. Yet, three major paradigmatic revolutions took place that have shaken the conceptual foundations of social order on which the idea of sovereignty was originally built, so that three corresponding challenges were posed to its traditional understanding. A first paradigmatic revolution from holism to individualism shifted the barycentre of the well-ordered society from a kind of predetermined unity of the community to the individuals. As a result, the legitimacy of sovereign power could no longer be taken for granted because of the passive acceptance of tradition or of an alleged mythological or divine “truth”. On the contrary, it was expected, from then on, that the sovereign power was legitimated “bottom-up”, i.e. by the reflexive consent of the citizens. According to this premise, absolutistic sovereignty was transformed into popular sovereignty. A second paradigmatic revolution expanded the boundaries of the well-ordered society to include, at least potentially, the whole humankind. Consequently, if it was to be justified, sovereign power had to adapt to the new situation by accepting global responsibility. The third and more recent paradigmatic revolution regarding the idea of the well-ordered society finally affected the assumption that the well-ordered society should always be conceived of as unitary, i.e., as a hierarchical and self-reliant pyramid of norms and institutions. Instead, following some contemporary theories, a society can also be considered well-ordered if composed of a plurality of systems of norms and institutions which are not related to one another in a hierarchical form, but through horizontal interconnections. Within the context of legal and institutional pluralism, sovereignty itself has to differentiate, so as to express the variety of individual cultural belongings and political affiliations that characterize the postnational constellation. In conclusion, if sovereignty is to be seen as a value, its concept has to meet the challenges deriving from all three major paradigmatic revolutions, which means it has to become consistent with the normative requirements of democratic government as well as with the variable geometry and the global responsibility of a necessarily interconnected world.

Der Staat in Zeiten des Internets . Auf der Suche nach einer Legitimationsarchitektur für die digitale Kommunikationsgesellschaft – Ein Essay

Thinking about the role of the state during the corona pandemic may seem like “carrying coals to Newcastle” . After all, times of crisis are considered to be times of the executive . What is needed more than ever, therefore, seems to be a strong state capable of acting . However, the architecture of statehood has already changed and political and social science research had begun addressing this long before the current crisis . In particular, it is digitization that drives international networking . This raises questions of the conditions of its legitimation because rule is increasingly associated with multilevel governance and a diffusion of political responsibility . Here, however, it is argued that even in the much-invoked “post-national constellation” the state remains an authority of legitimation, if not the decisive one . In order to maintain and further develop liberal democracy, a new regulatory policy for the digital communication society is required, in which the state is not less important than an active civil society .

Supranational states in the postnational constellation

Supranational states in the postnational constellation

Transnational constitutional pluralism, its promises and pitfalls

Uma miríade de novas teorias constitucionais converge em atribuir um papel emergente para as formas de regulação social não submetidas aos sistemas políticos e autoridades dos Estados nacionais. Diversas abordagens tentam entender a diversidade e a multiplicidade de camadas, níveis e atores que constituem a constelação pós-nacional das estruturas regulatórias. Uma das propostas teóricas mais proeminentes é a ideia de um constitucionalismo pluralista transnacional de Gunther Teubner. Este artigo apresenta a proposta de Teubner e propõe uma crítica do conceito de constitucionalização para além do Estado. Ao final, o artigo argumenta que, embora a abordagem pluralista de Teubner ofereça uma descrição interessante sobre as relações entre poder e direito no nível transnacional, há limites funcionais à sua pretensão de que essas constituições sejam equivalentes e funcionais das constituições políticas.

Introduction

Introduction

The inverted postnational constellation: Identitarian populism in context

AbstractAs exemplified by the pan‐European ‘Identitarian movement’ (IM), contemporary far‐right populism defies the habitual matrix within which right‐wing radicalism has been criticised as a negation of liberal cosmopolitanism. The IM's political stance amalgamates features of cultural liberalism and racialist xenophobia into a defence of ‘European way of life.’ We offer an alternative decoding of the phenomenon by drawing on Jürgen Habermas's ‘postnational constellation.’ It casts the IM's protectionist qua chauvinistic populism as ‘inverted’ postnationalism, engendered through territorial and ethnic appropriation of universal political values. As such, inclusionary ideals of cosmopolitan liberalism and democracy purporting humanistic postnationalism have been transformed by Identitarians into elements of a privileged civilisational life‐style to be protected from ‘intruders.’ Remaining within the remit of the grammar of the postnational constellation, trans‐European chauvinism, we contend, is susceptible to inclusive articulation. Foregrounding radical emancipatory social transformation would however require not more democracy, but a principled critique of capitalism.

Democracy in contested territory: on the legitimacy of global legal pluralism

ABSTRACT The proliferation of law-making beyond the nation-state has produced a landscape of thoroughgoing ‘global legal pluralism’ (GLP), in which legal regimes overlap in the same social field. Individuals find themselves under the rule of multiple and conflicting regimes, some of which have no ties of accountability to democratic constituencies. GLP thus rouses a perplexing picture of globalization as it untethers law-makers from jurisdictions, and governance from constituencies. Is democratic legitimation possible within the tangled spaces of governance that characterize the post-national constellation? I argue that yes, democracy is possible in a legally plural world. Specifically, GLP is compatible with democratic principles when restricted by a territorial principle, which limits legal pluralism to authorities with the potential to be legitimated by territorial constituencies, and this is because territorial enmeshment is politically fundamental. However, I also argue that the reconciliation of overlapping rule and democracy requires rethinking territory as a non-sovereign jurisdiction, i.e. territories must be conceived as overlapping and contested. This conception of territory includes not only states, but also municipalities, supranational federations, and other possible territorial forms. The territorial principle should therefore be understood in line with cosmopolitan calls to theorize democracy beyond the sovereign nation-state.

Risk management in the digital constellation – a constitutional perspective (part II)

The digital revolution is creating new risks, together with multiple opportunities for communication, commerce and political participation. What Ulrich Beck described as the world risk society and what – from another perspective – Jürgen Habermas calls the “postnational constellation” is a challenge to our concepts of society and democracy. Digitisation is pushing this development towards a new dimension that allows us to speak of the “digital constellation”. Social relations are denser across borders and continents; what happens there matters here, as if it were happening on our own doorstep. New kinds of risks are arising as a side-effect of the increasing use of information technologies, while the internet also offers – for the first time – an infrastructure that makes formerly unrealistic concepts of cosmopolitan democracy (David Held) a real option. This includes the establishment of a constitutional framework for normative processes aiming at managing effectively, among other global challenges, cyber-risks at national, supra-national and global levels in a coherent way. Multilevel Constitutionalism is proposed as a means of providing a normative theory for conceptualising the constitutional structure of a layered system of governance that ensures a maximum degree of self-determination for the individual and, thus, for the democratic legitimacy of decisions made at each level, from local to global. Thus, the constitution for democratically legitimate action at the global level does not question democracy at other levels, but should be complementary, based upon functioning states, and designed to deal with issues that are beyond their reach, including cybersecurity.

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

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.

Risk management in the digital constellation - a constitutional perspective (part I)

The digital revolution is creating new risks, together with multiple opportunities for communication, commerce and political participation. What Ulrich Beck described as the world risk society and – from another perspective – Jürgen Habermas calls the “postnational constellation” is a challenge to our concepts of society and democracy. Digitisation is pushing this development towards a new dimension that allows us to speak of the “digital constellation”. Social relations are denser across borders and continents; what happens there matters here, as if it were happening on our own doorstep. New kinds of risks are arising as a side-effect of the increasing use of information technologies, while the internet also offers – for the first time – an infrastructure that makes formerly unrealistic concepts of cosmopolitan democracy (David Held) a real option. This includes the establishment of a constitutional framework for normative processes aiming at, among other global challenges, effectively managing cyber-risks at national, supra-national and global levels in a coherent way. Multilevel Constitutionalism is proposed as a means of providing a normative theory for conceptualising the constitutional structure of a layered system of governance that ensures a maximum degree of self-determination for the individual and, thus, for the democratic legitimacy of decisions made at each level, from local to global. Thus, the constitution for democratically legitimate action at the global level does not question democracy at other levels, but should be complementary, based upon functioning states, and designed to deal with issues that are beyond their reach, including cyber-security.

El lugar de la literatura en el escenario posnacional

Desde los albores de la modernidad y al menos en Occidente, es un hecho comprobado que los proyectos nacionalistas se han sostenido con frecuencia y en gran medida sobre categorías culturales, entre las que la lengua y la literatura ocupan lugares destacados. A menudo, la lengua y la literatura han dejado de ser herramientas con las que explorar el mundo, al margen de todo tipo de fronteras y divisiones, para convertirse en elementos de afirmación nacionalista. Así, nacionalismo, nación, Estado nacional, nacionalidad, identidad nacional, cuestión nacional y singularidad lingüística y cultural son conceptos de acuñación específicamente europea que han recorrido senderos paralelos desde las décadas finales del siglo XVIII, momento seminal de la modernidad en el que se sientan las bases políticas, culturales y estéticas de lo que posteriormente conoceremos con el nombre de romanticismo.

Reflections on the European Promise

Claims, aspirations, and hopes for Europe as a postnational constellation are often based on the assumption that the European sociality, as it emerges from its public discourses, is more or less committed to a normative promise of global justice. This faith in Europe lacks no critical edge. Jürgen Habermas, for instance, promotes a sustained critique of current European mentalities that aims to unravel Europe's normative potential. In critical dialogue with Habermas's most recent ideas on this subject, the article argues that, to be meaningful, the European promise requires something other than a mere postnationalization. It requires a heightened understanding of global justice and a critical relation with past and present liabilities that is more reforming of European consciousness. Borrowing from aesthetic idioms, the article terms this different outlook an “anamorphic gaze.” Its relevance is illustrated through examples of challenges typically overlooked in the European public sphere because they do not satisfy the easily digestible affective and political criteria of a “crisis” narrative.

Bringing the political back in: reconstructing the debate over evidence-based policy. A response to Newman

ABSTRACTIn his article, Newman aims at overcoming the binary rift between rationalists and constructivists, between supporters and opponents of evidence-based policy. Both positions, he argues, are not as incompatible as it seems. They could coexist by understanding that rationalists seek to reduce the influence of ideology on policy and that constructivists can show the difficulties of this task. The argumentative steps leading to his ‘deconstruction’ of the debate, however, do not reflect well the complexity of the subject. The response therefore aims at reconstructing the debate over evidence-based policy by focusing on three main points: first, the deficits of the distinction between rationalists and constructivists; second, the political dimension of evidence and the relationship between knowing and governing; third, the different uses of evidence in political and cultural contexts. Under the conditions of the postnational constellation, ignoring the political dimension of evidence and the cultural contexts in which expertise operates may even intensify the controversies. There are, however, also promising attempts to critically redefine the principles and modes of evidence-based policy beyond simple dichotomies.

The poverty of Critical Theory in International Relations: Habermas, Linklater and the failings of cosmopolitan critique

Within and outside of the discipline of International Relations, Frankfurt School Critical Theory faces a ‘crisis of critique’ that is affecting its ability to generate analyses and political interventions that are relevant to the present world-historical conjuncture. This article seeks to identify the theoretical origins of this predicament by investigating the meta-theoretical architecture of the prevailing Habermasian framework of critique. I contend that the binary ontology and methodology of society that lies at the heart of the Habermasian paradigm has effected an uncoupling of normative critique from substantive social and political analysis and resulted in a severe weakening of both Critical Theory’s ‘explanatory-diagnostic’ and ‘anticipatory-utopian’ capabilities. Thereafter, I discuss the determinate ways in which these issues have manifested in critical theoretical interventions on international politics by exploring both Habermas’s own writings on the post-national constellation and Andrew Linklater’s theory of cosmopolitanism and the sociology of global morals. Both projects, it is argued, rely on a reductive, functionalist analysis of global political dynamics and express a political perspective that lacks a definite critical content. Ultimately, the article contends that a revitalisation of Critical Theory in International Relations must necessarily involve a clarification of its fundamental categories of analysis and a recovery of the orientation towards totalising critique.

La política en la constelación postnacional. Una aproximación a la concepción habermasiana del Estado

The steady loss of sovereign power of the national states and the correlative transition to a post-national constellation are, according to Habermas, among the major trends that characterize the current state of affairs in the world in political terms. Against this geopolitical background in which clear guidelines remain to be defined, Habermas outlines a possible political response with a democratic design: he suggests to recover the cosmopolitan project of Kant and to expedite the constitutionalization of the international sphere. One of the biggest challenges in this regard consists in reconciling the need for global governance of common affairs of humanity with demands for democratic participation. The configuration of a post-westphalian democratic practice in accordance with a multi-level structure of international relations could be a plausible solution.

Managing for Political Corporate Social Responsibility: New Challenges and Directions for PCSR 2.0

ABSTRACTThis article takes stock of the discourse on ‘political CSR’ (PCSR), reconsiders some of its assumptions, and suggests new directions for what we call ‘PCSR 2.0’. We start with a definition of PCSR, focusing on firms’ contribution to public goods. We then discuss historical antecedents to the debate and outline the original economic and political context. The following section explores emerging changes in the institutional context relevant to PCSR and reconsiders some of the assumptions underlying Habermas’ thesis of the postnational constellation. This highlights some neglected issues in previous works on PCSR, including the influence of nationalism and fundamentalism, the role of various types of business organisations, the return of government regulation, the complexity of institutional contexts, the efficiency of private governance, the financialization and digitalization of the economy, and the relevance of managerial sensemaking. Finally, we discuss the contributions to this special issue and relate them to the newly emerging research agenda.

The paradox of technocratic democracy and the democratic deficit of european institutions by Jürgen Habermas

In the nineties, Habermas redirected his political writings to the post-national constellation (global and European) and the possibilities of a society politically integrated through transnational democracy (or post-national democracy). This thematic reorientation took place on two fronts. The first one is the global transnational democracy, which includes the impacts of the economic globalization on national democracies, as well the proposal for a political Constitution for a pluralistic world society, based on a constitutionalization of international law. The second one is the European transnational democracy, which includes the redefinition of the political profile of European welfare state for an economic liberal profile, as well the paradox of democratic technocracy operated by European institutions and the proposal to overcome the decoupled technocratic policy model. This paper will address only this last topic, describing the reasons of the democratic deficit and the consequent delay of European political Union. Despite numerous reforms, the technocratic policies have not eliminated the discrepancy between centralization and democratization, and mistakenly indicate another direction further reinforcing the problem of European undemocratic institutions. In contrast, Habermas argues that the democratic deficit could only be overcome replacing the technocratic approach by a deeper democratization of European institutions.

De staat van de politieke filosofie

Abstract The state of political philosophy In this article we attempt to do what is by definition impossible: providing a complete picture of the discipline of political philosophy today. We start by presenting the three thematic subfields in which most research seems to be taking place: democracy (including such topics as deliberation, representation, radical democracy, republicanism, and populism), justice (which covers such diverse topics as capabilities, intergenerational justice, and linguistic justice), and what we call the ‘postnational constellation’. This latter subfield in particular is growing ever larger. The context of globalization increasingly urges political philosophers to reformulate all classical questions about democracy and justice, as is visible in discussions about global justice, governance, cosmopolitanism, federalism, or the ‘commons’. After surveying the main themes of contemporary political philosophy, we discuss a number of methodological evolutions and controversies. We look for instance at the role of intellectual-historical research; not only does the quality and the quantity of such research continue to rise, it is also well-connected to contemporary debates and clearly inspires and refines these debates. Most attention, though, is given to the ongoing confrontation between ‘normative’ political theorists and so-called ‘realists’. The former believe that political philosophers should not just contemplate social and political reality, but should also propose guidelines for the (re)design of social institutions, and should maybe even actively contribute to realizing these proposals. ‘Realists’, by contrast, believe that political philosophy, as a branch of philosophy, should aim for insight in the dynamics of political action, in human relations and motivations as they become visible in politics, and in the role of the political sphere in society. We conclude our article with a critical note on the incompleteness of our survey.