This book explores the democratic methods by which political communities make their basic law, and the dangers associated with constitution-making.

Constitutions are made in almost all transformation of regimes. What are the dangers and the hopes associated with such a process? What can make constitution-making legitimate? The Adventures of the Constituent Power explores the democratic methods by which political communities make their basic law, arguing that the most advanced method developed from Spain and South Africa. The first part of this book focuses on history of the idea of constitution-making, before and during the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century. The second part traces the notion of the constituent power in recent regime transitions that were consciously post-revolutionary, from Spain to South Africa. With the return of revolutions or revolutionary patterns of constitution-making, the book examines the use and potential failure of the new ideas available. The third part then proceeds to consider the type of constitution that is likely to emerge from the post-sovereign process.

This book examines the relationship between constituent power and the law, and the place of the former in constitutional history, drawing from constitutional theory beyond the Anglo-American sphere, with new material made available for the first time to English readers.

Spurred by recent governmental transitions from dictatorships to democratic institutions, this highly original work argues that negotiated civil society-oriented transitions have an affinity for a distinctive method of constitution making_one that accomplishes the radical change of institutions through legal continuity. Arato presents a compelling argument that this is the preferred method for rapidly establishing viable democratic institutions, and he contrasts the negotiated model with radical revolutionary change. This exceptionally engaging work will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, constitutional law, and East European studies, as well as to political scientists and sociologists.

From the French Revolution onwards, constituent power has been a key concept for thinking about the principle of popular power, and how it should be realised through the state and its institutions. Tracing the history of constituent power across five key moments - the French Revolution, nineteenth-century French politics, the Weimar Republic, post-WWII constitutionalism, and political philosophy in the 1960s - Lucia Rubinelli reconstructs and examines the history of the principle. She argues that, at any given time, constituent power offered an alternative understanding of the power of the people to those offered by ideas of sovereignty. Constituent Power: A History also examines how, in turn, these competing understandings of popular power resulted in different institutional structures and reflects on why contemporary political thought is so prone to conflating constituent power with sovereignty.

Constitutional politics has become a major terrain of contemporary struggles. Contestation around designing, replacing, revising, and dramatically re-interpreting constitutions is proliferating worldwide. Starting with Southern Europe in post-Franco Spain, then in the ex-Communist countries in Central Europe, post-apartheid South Africa, and now in the Arab world, constitution making has become a project not only of radical political movements, but of liberals and conservatives as well. Wherever new states or new regimes will emerge in the future, whether through negotiations, revolutionary process, federation, secession, or partition, the making of new constitutions will be a key item on the political agenda. Combining historical comparison, constitutional theory, and political analysis, this volume links together theory and comparative analysis in order to orient actors engaged in constitution making processes all over the world. The book examines two core phenomena: the development of a new, democratic paradigm of constitution making, and the resulting change in the normative discussions of constitutions, their creation, and the source of their legitimacy. After setting out a theoretical framework for understanding these developments, Andrew Arato examines recent constitutional politics in South Africa, Hungary, Turkey, and Latin America and discusses the political stakes in constitution-making. The book concludes by offering a systematic critique of the alternative to the new paradigm, populism and populist constituent politics.

This book seeks to develop a new approach to EU legitimacy by reformulating the classical notion of constituent power for the context of European integration and challenging the conventional theoretical assumptions regarding the EU's ultimate source of authority.

The Oxford Handbook of Populism presents the state of the art of research on populism from the perspective of Political Science. The book features work from the leading experts in the field, and synthesizes the main strands of research in four compact sections: concepts, issues, regions, and normative debates. Due to its breath, The Oxford Handbook of Populism is an invaluable resource for those interested in the study of populism, but also forexperts in each of the topics discussed, who will benefit from accounts of current discussions and research gaps, as well as a map of new directions in the study of populism.

From the ivory tower to the barricades! Radical intellectuals explore the relationship between research and resistance.

This book develops the idea that since decolonisation, regional patterns of security have become more prominent in international politics. The authors combine an operational theory of regional security with an empirical application across the whole of the international system. Individual chapters cover Africa, the Balkans, CIS Europe, East Asia, EU Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, and South Asia. The main focus is on the post-Cold War period, but the history of each regional security complex is traced back to its beginnings. By relating the regional dynamics of security to current debates about the global power structure, the authors unfold a distinctive interpretation of post-Cold War international security, avoiding both the extreme oversimplifications of the unipolar view, and the extreme deterritorialisations of many globalist visions of a new world disorder. Their framework brings out the radical diversity of security dynamics in different parts of the world.