After National Democracy

The “imagined community” of the nation,which served as the affective basis for the post-French Revolution social contract, as well as its institutional counter-part, the welfare state, are currently under great stress as states lose control over what once was referred to as the “national economy” In this book a number of authors – historians, legal scholars, political theorists – consider the fate of national democracy in the age of globalization.

In particular, the authors ask whether the order of European nation-states, with its emphasis on substantive democracy, is now, in the guise of the European Union, giving way to a more loosely constructed, often federalized system of procedural republics (partly constructed in the image of the United States). Is national parliamentary democracy being replaced by a politico-legal culture, where citizen action increasingly takes place in a transnational legal domain at the expense of traditional (and national) party politics? Is the notion of a nationally-bound citizen in the process of being superceded by a cosmopolitan legal subject?

1. Introduction -Lars Trägårdh
2. Normative Theory and the EU: Legitimising the Euro-Polity and its Regime - Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione
3. The Juridification of Politics in the United States and Europe: Historical Roots,Contemporary Debates, and Future Prospects - Lars Trägårdh and Michael X. Delli Carpini
4. Rights and Regulation in (the) Europe(an Union): After National Democracy? - Daniel Wincott
5. Constitutional Moments - Juliet Williams
6 Law and Politics in a Madisonian Republic: Opportunities and Challenges for Judges and Citizens in the New Europe - Lisa Hilbink
7 Democracy Beyond Nation and Rule? Reflections on the Democratic Possibilities of Proceduralism - Warren Breckman

“Set against the backdrop of current developments within the EU...the thematic relevance and timeliness of the inspiring deliberations contained in After National Democracy become apparent.” –  Christian Pippin, Institute of International Law and International Relations, Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria, www.globallawbooks.org

“For legal scholars, this volume presents interesting and thoughtful insights into the process of state building in relation to protecting the individual against the Leviathan through use of the 'least dangerous branch,' the courts, a concept foreign to Europe.” –  Roger Handberg, The Law and Politics Book Review