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Legality, Legitimacy, and Democratic Constitution Making

A. Arato, Post Sovereign Constitution Making: Learning and Legitimacy. OUP, 2016; A. Arato, The Adventures of the Constituent Power: Beyond Revolutions? CUP, 2017; J. Colón-Ríos, Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic Legitimacy and the Question of the Constituent Power. Routledge, 2012.

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Notes

  1. Arato 2017, p. 1.

  2. By elective affinity Arato refers to the logical links between a model of constitution making and a set of likely consequences derived from its practice. He accepts that a causal link between these models and the consequences he attributes to them can only be fully demonstrated by means of large N methodologies including more cases than the ones he studies in his books. Arato 2017, p. 366. However, he believes that these large N studies should avoid excessive formal analysis; they must include comparisons of specific case studies that pay more detailed attention to history. Arato 2016, p. 299.

  3. Arato 2017, p. 1.

  4. Arato 2016, p. 12-13.

  5. Arato 2011, p. 324.

  6. Arato 2017, p. 31.

  7. On the intellectual history of the sovereign model of constitution making, see Arato 2017, Ch. 1.

  8. Arato 2016, p. 290.

  9. Id., p. 10.

  10. See, Lefort 1988.

  11. As in Bodin 1992, I: VIII.

  12. Arendt 2006, p. 29.

  13. On this inversion, see Schmitt 2008, p. 102.

  14. See, for instance, Preuss 1995, p. 19.

  15. Arato 2016, p. 133.

  16. Arato 2017, p. 30.

  17. Id., p. 20.

  18. Arato 2016, p. 10.

  19. Arato 2017, p. 186.

  20. As Arato rightly notices. See, Arato 2016, p. 291.

  21. Colón-Ríos 2012, p. 2-3.

  22. Perhaps this is why Arato claims that Colón-Ríos “seeks to establish revolution as permanent”. See Arato 2016, p. 9. However, it is not entirely right to read the work of Colón-Ríos as a continuation of Negri’s theory of a permanent revolution. His is not an argument for the constant mobilization of the constituent power, but for a constitutional regime that facilitates its activation and execution when the time comes.

  23. Colón-Ríos 2012, Ch. 5.

  24. On this, see Colón-Ríos 2011.

  25. Colón-Ríos 2012, p. 87.

  26. Id., p. 88. This is an important difference between Sieyès and Schmitt, and Colón-Ríos follows the latter’s radicalized conception of the constituent power in this regard. Sieyès conceived of the constituent assembly as a body of extraordinary representatives that once elected substitutes the nation as holder of the constituent power. See Sieyès 2003, p. 139. Schmitt, however, understood representation as an antidemocratic mechanism that deprives the people of the opportunity of saying the last word on the adoption of a new constitution. See Schmitt 2008, p. 128.

  27. Colón-Ríos 2012, p. 89.

  28. Id., p. 160.

  29. Id., p. 163.

  30. Id., p. 164.

  31. Id., p. 164.

  32. Id., p. 154.

  33. On the influence of Rousseau’s political theory on this model of constitution making, see Colón-Ríos 2016.

  34. Sieyès 2003, p. 110.

  35. See, for instance, Bernal 2014.

  36. Schmitt 2009.

  37. Kalyvas 2008, p. 125-126.

  38. O’Donnell 1994, p. 59-60.

  39. Schmitt 2008, p. 275.

  40. Colón-Ríos 2012, p. 88.

  41. See, for instance, González 2017.

  42. Arato 2016, p. 120-121.

  43. Figueroa 2019, p. 159-162.

  44. Colón-Ríos 2012, p. 111.

  45. Arato 2016, p. 293.

  46. Colón-Ríos 2012, p. 57-60.

  47. Arato 2016, p. 133-134.

  48. Id., p. 130.

  49. Id., p. 124-125.

  50. Id., p. 102.

  51. Id., p. 79-82, 85.

  52. Id., p. 95.

  53. Kay 2014.

  54. Preuss 1995, p. 94.

  55. Arato 2016, p. 97.

  56. Urbinati and Warren 2008, p. 398.

  57. See, for instance, Urbinati 2000, p. 761.

  58. As Arato rightly points out, even though Colón-Ríos makes an interesting normative case for the adoption of an electoral rule based on the principle of proportional representation, he fails to see that such a rule is more likely to be produced during the pre-assembly moment of inclusive negotiations typical of the post sovereign model. Arato 2016, p. 298. See also his comparison of the Colombian and Venezuelan constitution making episodes. Arato 2017, p. 310-327.

  59. On the role of internal and external mechanisms of constraint, see Issacharoff 2007, Landau 2013, and Negretto 2013.

  60. Arato 2016, p. 124.

  61. Id., p. 117.

  62. Id., Ch. 4.

  63. Id., p. 127-129.

  64. Id., p. 128.

  65. On this, see Negretto 2013, Ch. 6.

  66. Mailey 2017, p. 1230.

  67. Arato 2017, Ch. 5.

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  1. Facultad de Jurisprudencia, Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia

    Nicolás Figueroa García-Herreros

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Figueroa García-Herreros, N. Legality, Legitimacy, and Democratic Constitution Making. Jus Cogens 1, 97–109 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42439-019-00007-9

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