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Introduction
I am associate professor in Political Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Business Law, University of Bologna. Until 2018, I was associate professor of Sociology and Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Sociology. I am currently teaching Democracy and Populisms, Sociology of Human Rights, and the Legal and Constitutional Foundations of Society. My research interests are in constitutional sociology, sociology of democracy, critique, and pragmatic sociology.
Additional affiliations
September 2014 - September 2017
September 2014 - August 2017
August 1999 - March 2005
Publications
Publications (93)
This engaging response from the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries to the Conversation with Peter Wagner takes up themes and problems of civilizations, meaning and ecologies raised in the exchange between Wagner and members of the Collective.
This conversation between Peter Wagner and members of the Social Imaginaries Collective addresses two aspects of Wagner’s project. First, it enquires into the significance of Cornelius Castoriadis’s project for Wagner’s social theory and historical sociology. Second, the conversation turns to Wagner’s reflections on the ongoing significance of Cast...
Populism represents the greatest political challenge to Western democracies since World War II. The electoral successes of populist parties and actors, Brexit, the presidency of Donald Trump or campaigns against containing the coronavirus pandemic are expressions of this phenomenon, in which the electorate is mobilised against supposed elites. The...
The main argument is that the contemporary manifestations of right-wing populism in Europe ought to be understood, at least in part, as reactions to a distinctive form of postwar European society, which I will call here embedded constitutional democracy. The argument is that the populist reaction to embedded constitutional democracy generally takes...
There is a modest but growing scholarly interest in populism in relation to the law and to judicial issues, but until now this interest remains largely confined to legal studies, in particular studies in constitutional law...
This chapter discusses a renewed interest in a sociology of constitutions in recent years. This interest has emerged not least due to the significantly changing nature of constitutions and constitutionalism, not in the last place as a result of apparent constitutional qualities inherent in legal regimes beyond state borders. A historically and soci...
The article departs from the discussion of constitutional mobilisation—the ‘process by which social actors employ constitutional norms and discourses to advocate for constitutional change’ ¹ —to introduce the concept of constitutional resistance—the public invocation of constitutional norms and principles, in defence of a distinctive view of consti...
The main argument in the article is that liberal democracy, human rights, and the idea of constitutionalism have remained contested in the transformation processes in East-Central Europe since 1989. The prevalent literature in the legal and political sciences have understood the changes in East-Central Europe since 1989 as a transitional process in...
This chapter considers the weight of populist arguments in the season of constitutional reform in Italy since the early 1990s. The understanding of populism is based on a dualistic perspective, in which democracies are subject to a fundamental tension between constitutionalism and populism. Two failed reform projects—respectively undertaken by the...
The article by Heike Krieger, published in this issue, is an important contribution to the debate on populism and the law, not least because of its emphasis on a distinctive populist approach to the law. Krieger’s account lacks however in providing sufficient attention to three dimensions: popular sovereignty, constituent power and a shifting imagi...
Counter-revolution by law in Hungary and Poland – Populism as a distinctive political project that mobilises anti-liberal conservative forces in society – Populist attempt to dismantle liberal-constitutional institutions in the name of a conservative, illiberal project – Populist critique of legal fundamentalism, understood as an excess of liberal...
Varieties of Populist Constitutionalism: The Transnational Dimension - ERRATA - Volume 20 Issue 4 - Paul Blokker
Populist constitutionalism is an increasingly discussed topic, but so far the analysis of the interrelation between populism and constitutionalism lacks a more systematic and comparative approach, able to bring out significant variety. Most of the recent literature on the phenomenon focuses on (right-wing) populism as a threat to constitutional dem...
The populist challenge to constitutional democracy—and constitutionalism as its modus operandi —is significant and raises deep questions regarding the nature of modern democracy. A crucial question pertains to the challenge that our existing (but eroding) democratic systems faces. The way we perceive this challenge is essential for our descriptive...
The intense engagement of populists with constitutionalism—a phenomenon originally related to experiences in Latin America—is increasingly evident in some of the new European Union member states. But the populist phenomenon is clearly not confined to more recently established democracies. Populist constitutionalism stands for a number of distinctiv...
The engagement of conservative, populist governments with constitutional reform and constitution-making is perceived as a significant threat to the rule of law and democracy within the European Union. Constitutionalists often assume a relation of mutual exclusion between populism and constitutionalism. In contrast, I argue that while populism ought...
The debate on the constitutionalization of European and transnational law pays little attention to the role of civil society and social movements. While civil society involvement in private litigation increasingly receives attention, the critical, counter‐democratic role of transnational movements in a broader, public sense, is largely ignored. The...
Call for Papers
Fragile Europe
5th Interim Conference
Political Sociology Research Network 32 of the European Sociological Association
Prague, 2 -3 November 2018
Deadline submission papers/panel proposals: 30 April, 2018
The European Union continues to face great challenges that strike at the heart of its existence. We see the rise of populist...
The article discusses civic engagement in Romanian constitutionalism. First, I briefly discuss theoretical dimensions of the relation between citizens and constitutional change. Second, the Romanian Constitution will be analyzed in terms of formal constitutional instruments of civic participation. Third, civic engagement in constitution-making and...
This landmark book provides the first systematic overview of the key scholarly contributions in an emerging field of research on constitutionalism: the sociology of constitutions. It presents chapters offering very different normative and methodological approaches to constitutions, ranging from analysis of national constitutional law, to research o...
Modern constitutionalism as an idea and practice is facing great uncertainty in current times. Scholarly debates focus predominantly on constitutions beyond the state, while the predicament of domestic constitutionalism is much less considered. This volume contributes to a theoretically informed analysis of the key challenges and changes affecting...
The chapter provides an attempt to more systematically conceptualize populist constitutionalism, predominantly focusing on the European context. While there is some emerging literature on the phenomenon of populist constitutionalism (Mudde 2013; Müller 2016; Thio 2012), a more robust and theoretical treatment of the relation between populism and co...
The economic crisis has triggered various constitutional reform processes in Europe, indicating a trend towards innovative forms of civic participation. In Italy, major constitutional reform attempts have been made since 2013. The article critically discusses the Italian case from the perspective of the meaningful participation of civil society and...
The modern constitution is predominantly understood as a way of instituting and limiting power, and is expected to contribute to (societal) stability, certainty, and order. Constitutions are hence of clear sociological interest, but until recently they have received little sociological attention. I argue that this is unfortunate, as a sociological...
This book provides the definitive reference point on all the issues pertaining to dealing with the 'crisis of the rule of law' in the European Union. Both Member State and EU levels are considered. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the concrete legal bases and instruments that the EU may avail itself of for enforcing rule of law, and...
From the Eastern Enlargement onwards, the EU has related its geopolitics to the diffusion of distinctive legal and political principles, linked to the design of constitutional democracy. The EU attempts to promote a distinctive constitutional imaginary, which helps to define who is included in the European project, and who is not (or threatened wit...
The democratic nature of the European integration project is contested, and contestation and dissent seem to be on the increase, or at least becoming more visible, with the current economic crisis. A European project confined to transnational market-making is found wanting in terms of social competence as well as civic-democratic enablement. It see...
This special issue of Perspectives on Federalism collects papers mostly presented at the General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research in September 2014. The issue contains five papers dealing with the role, the status, the dynamics, and the functions of sub-national constitutional politics and sub-national constitutionalism i...
Abstract: Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global
imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and po...
The democratic deficit of the European Union (EU) has widened with the current multiple European crises (financial, economic, political, and constitutional), not least due to a highly problematic form of Eurocrisis management, based on ‘new intergovernmentalism’, recourse to international rather than treaty law, ambiguous legal arrangements, interf...
The troublesome Hungarian, and possibly Romanian, developments regarding democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law call for the attention of the European Union and its Member States, in particular regarding violations of the principles of Art. 2 TEU. Various proposals for monitoring mechanisms or even new institutions of oversight have been...
In Luc Boltanski’s On Critique, various dimensions of democracy as a political regime and form of society are evident, but never explicitly conceptualized. There is, however, something to be gained by making the democratic dimension in Boltanski’s work more explicit: the normative and political standpoints become clearer, but also the real-life pos...
The European crisis has provoked widespread critique of capitalist arrangements in most if not all countries in Europe. But to what extent do contemporary social protest and critique indicate a revival of critical capacity? The range of criticisms against the existing capitalist system raised by various social movements is seen as ineffectual and f...
Since the deep economic crisis of 2008, Iceland has seen the emergence of a remarkable, experimental attempt at constitution-making from below. This Icelandic experiment constitutes a rare –- in distinct ways probably unique -- example of a popular or citizen-driven constitutionalism. The Icelandic participatory approach in many ways challenges cor...
This book considers whether the potential of democracy following the end of the Cold War was diminished by technocratic, judicial control of politics in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. It explores the complexities and drawbacks of modern constitutionalism by offering a comprehensive theoretical and comparative–empirical assessmen...
Romanian constitution-making since 1989 has been of an uneven and recently evermore conflictive kind. In the 1990s, no significant changes to the 1991 Constitution were made, and the role of the Romanian Constitution could be said to be less visible in politics. Since the mid-2000s, in contrast, and after the 2003 amendment mostly triggered for rea...
Is there still some rubble of the myth of Central Europe left today, 20 years after the downfall of the communist regimes? It was against the totalitarian regimes, lest we forget, that the myth of Central Europe was ultimately (re-)erected in the 1980s. Did the myth lose its relevance with the demise of communism? This chapter explores the extent t...
The modern idea of the constitution is closely tied up with the political form of the nation-state, but the post-national age poses various challenges to this idea, not least due to the emergence of constitutional or quasi-constitutional regimes both beyond and below the nation-state. While a good, and steadily growing, amount of research probes th...
The democratic nature of the European integration project is contested, and contestation and dissent seem to be on the increase, or at least becoming more visible, with the current economic crisis. The European project confined to transnational market-making is found wanting in terms of social competence as well as civic-democratic enablement. It s...
The ideas of the rule of law and constitutionalism have become an intrinsic part of any process of democratisation around the world. This was equally the case in the radical changes that occurred in East-Central Europe (ECE) around the year of 1989. The adherence in the region to a form of “new constitutionalism” has been frequently seen as an indi...
This book provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of democracy in Europe, with a focus on the new EU member states, and makes an important and original contribution to the debate on the future of European democracy. Author Paul Blokker seeks to provide a critical reconceptualization of the notion of democratic political culture by developing a...
Romanian constitutional democracy is once again experiencing a period of great turmoil. In the early 2000s, Romanian democracy seemed to get closer to the idea of a Rechtsstaat and the rule of law, and what in general could be called a form of ‘legal constitutionalism’ or ‘new constitutionalism’, after a troublesome phase of a limited role of the c...
Iceland has recently embarked on an experimental form of constitution-making from below. Iceland is in this a rare – in distinct ways probably unique – example of a popular or citizen-driven constitutionalism. This participatory approach in many ways challenges core assumptions of mainstream, modernist understandings of constitutionalism, such as t...
The paper discusses the significance and role of subnational democracy in the context of new European democracies in flux. In a context of fragile democratic traditions, the displacement of national sovereignty, and increasing civic adverseness to national politics, local forms of representative and direct democracy might – in advantageous circumst...
The article discusses the status and role of politics — in its various facets — in the pragmatic sociology of critique. We focus on a number of different dimensions of politics — politics-as-justification, politics-as-distribution, politics-as-constitution, and politics-as-defiance — that can said to be of importance for a pragmatic sociology of cr...
The dramatic changes of 1989 have been widely understood as the confirmation of Western, liberal democracy as the ultimate model of the modern polity. The fact that 1989 was about a dual language that not only emphasized the rule of law and the implementation of rights, but also articulated ideas of democracy alternative to the mainstream liberal-c...
The recent (re-)establishment of constitutional democracies in Central and Eastern Europe is affected by a paradoxical situation: while modern constitutionalism was significantly strenghtened by the ‘new constitutionalism’ in the region, it is itself increasingly seen as out of touch with (pluralist) reality. In the paper, I explore to what extent...
Constitutions should not be regarded as foundational documents circumscribing closed legal orders. In Richard Bellamy’s words, ‘the constitution cannot be viewed as an objective fount of moral and political wisdom’ (Bellamy 2007: 166). Constitutions are ‘instituted’ and as such tend to reflect prevalent political cultures that form the horizons of...
The essay offers some reflections on the modern experiences with openness and closure in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The relation of this region to modernity has often been viewed in an ambivalent light. One reading emphasizes the region’s exposure to Western modernity (understood in its Enlightenment guise), and the frequent projects...
This chapter examines Romania's historical experience, with particular emphasis on how the modern Romanian nation emerged at the intersection of multiple Europes that shaped its path to modernity. It analyses the complexity of the pre-modern and early modern trajectories of the Romanian principalities, that is, the political and cultural developmen...
The abstract idea of a written constitution as the foundational basis of modern democratic societies is a largely undisputed element in much of social, political, and legal theory. At the same time, the nature, form, and distinct functions of the constitution in - and increasingly also beyond - modern democratic societies is an evermore frequent ob...
This book analyzes regional and local models of development, in the context of existing socio-economic disparities and the impact of EU enlargement and European policy, offering a comparative and in-depth analysis of the distinct nature of regional differences within Central and Eastern Europe.
In a political reading, 1989 has been predominantly interpreted from a liberal point of view, and its impact has primarily
been taken as strengthening the liberal-democratic idea of a political community. The year 1989 is, however, not reducible
to a mere confirmation of a universal status of liberal democracy, rather, a reverse reading—i.e., the r...
The conventional view that holds that the post-1989 economic transformations in Central and Eastern Europe are in grosso modo about the convergence of these societies towards a western or Western European economic standard can in many ways be seen as still informing many studies on the issue (see, inter alia, Cernat, 2006; Lane, 2007; cf. Hay, 2004...
The democratization of the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been predominantly understood as a process concerning the institutionalization of political communities based on civic and political rights, and the rule of law. The rights-based programmes were not, however, the only political programmes that informed the...
Political and cultural diversity in contemporary Europe can be encountered on many levels and in a variety of forms. The significance of such political and cultural diversity is, however, differently understood, and conceptualized, and not always sufficiently appreciated in distinct perceptions of Europe. A variety of perceptions of Europe have pla...
Democratization studies endorses a liberal view of democracy and political culture. Insufficient notice is taken of alternative models of democracy. I argue that a ‘multiple democracies’ approach that takes potential variety in democratic political cultures into account has three advantages over the conventional approach: it is sensitive to the his...
This book analyses the opportunities and barriers for youth entrepreneurship amid systemic change in Central and Eastern Europe. The authors cover different aspects of youth entrepreneurship and its contribution to the debate on youth unemployment in transition economies. The book discusses the wide-spread over-optimism regarding youth entrepreneur...
The enlargement of the European Union has led to an increase of diversity within the European area. While the project of enlargement can be understood as one in which the European Union has sought to defend an exclusive understanding of European identity (a ‘Fortress Europe’), the combined process of enlargement and constitutionalisation can be see...
The majority of studies of post-communism – habitually grouped under the heading of ‘transitology’ – understand the transition ultimately as a political and cultural convergence of the ex-communist societies with Western Europe. Even those critical approaches that regard the post-communist transition as a relatively unique phenomenon (as in the app...
In recent years it has been possible to observe a historical and cultural turn in the studies of transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Whereas until the late 1990s the field was dominated by 'transitology', which endorsed the convergence of the post-communist countries with Western Europe (both in a normative and an analytical sense), more rece...
The objective of the ,paper is to analyse Romania's experience with modernity ,by identifying and distinguishing two projects of modernisation in Romanian history, i.e. the liberal and the fascist one. Both projects are understood as competing ,projects confronting basic problématiques of a political, socio-economic, and cultural nature. The projec...
In the paper, it is argued that democratization in Central and Eastern Europe involves important forms of differentiation of democracy, rather than merely convergence to a singular – liberal-democratic, constitutional - model. One way of taking up democratic differentiation in post-communist societies is by analysing the constitutional documents of...
The revolutions of 1989 have predominantly been understood as the confirmation of Western, liberal democracy as the ultimate model of the modern polity. Here, it is however argued that there is more to 1989 than the mere collapse of the communist world as the direct alternative to Western modernity. 1989 has had subtle implications for rethinking d...
Abstract. The ‘return to Europe’ of the new member states of the European Union is widely seen as a reunification of the ‘European family’. In this, the profound processes of transformation that these societies are experiencing are mostly understood as a continent-wide process of convergence. But such far-reaching processes of change have equally s...