EUROGOV
No. C-06-03
John Erik Fossum and Hans-Jörg Trenz
When the people come in: Constitution-making and the belated
politicisation of the European Union
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Published: April 7, 2006
Abstract
The EU has over decades gradually developed a material constitutional
arrangement, with very limited public input. Since 2001, the
Laeken constitutional process which produced the Treaty establishing
a Constitution for Europe has become greatly politicized.
This automatically directs our attention to the public sphere
as a core requirement of any modern constitutional system.
More specifically, this paper will analyse the structural
determinants of mediation and public communication between
European constitution-makers and their diversified constituencies.
The aim is to relate the negative referendum results or what
we refer to as ratification failure to the European public
sphere deficit. Three possible explanations for ratification
failure will be discerned and discussed: The first posits
that constitution-making, in order to be successful, must
rely on pre-existing resources of common trust, solidarity
and understanding, which are constitutive of a shared public
sphere. The second explanation takes as its point of departure
that a process of constitution-making has a catalytic function
that in turn can constitute a shared public sphere. The third
explanation attributes ratification failure to the manner
in which mediatisation affects public communication in the
EU. As will be argued, the contingent character of mediatisation
contains particular risks for the European constitutional
endeavour which merits further research attention.
Keywords:
media, referendum, constitution building, democratization,
deliberative democracy, discourse
John
Erik Fossum – ARENA Centre
for European Studies, University of Oslo
e-mail: j.e.fossum@arena.uio.no
Hans-Jörg Trenz
– ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo
e-mail: h.j.t@arena.uio.no
© 2006 John Erik Fossum
and Hans-Jörg Trenz
Citing this EUROGOV
paper:
Fossum, John Erik, and Hans-Jörg Trenz. 2006. When the
people come in: Constitu-tion-making and the belated politicisation
of the European Union. European Governance Papers (EUROGOV)
No. C-06-03,
http://www.connex-network.org/eurogov/pdf/egp-connex-C-06-03.pdf
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