Abstract
This article argues that reading Joseph Weiler’s The Transformation of Europe can enhance our understanding of the limits of liberal constitutional imaginary on which Transformation builds, and which it helped to establish in the 1990s. Now, when ‘Western liberalism’ is in retreat, such critical reading may be indispensable for those who seek alternatives. The chapter is structured as follows: it briefly defines the concept of ‘constitutional imaginary’, then provides a brief genealogy of Transformation and offers a critical reading of the whole essay, which prepares the ground for an outline of Transformation’s constitutional imaginary based on liberal-legalist ideology combined with a communitarian utopia. It is shown how each of them contradicts the other, but at the same time none can exist without the other. The chapter then reveals what Transformation (and its imaginary) hides from sight: how its rendering of European integration’s history, reduced to the narrative of Europe’s founding fathers’ reflective choice for Europe, and the ignorance of political economy overlooks the complex and complicated histories of the states that came to form the Union. The conclusion finally connects these findings to the current issues facing the EU and liberal constitutionalism as such.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | European Constitutional Imaginaries : Between Ideology and Utopia |
Editors | Jan Komárek |
Number of pages | 28 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 2023 |
Pages | 119-146 |
Chapter | 6 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780192855480 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780191945649 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |