ABSTRACT
Constitutionalism in Europe is in turmoil. This is not only because of the European integration project and its constitutional claims, but also due to important changes in the form and role of constitutions in European societies (as well as globally). One could, as Francesco Palermo does, speak of an age of ‘constitutional acceleration’, that is, the ‘intensifi cation of recourse to (the instrument of) revision in order to update the constitution’. 1 Ginsburg and Dixon, more generally, relate the prominence of constitutional change and constitution-making in recent times to the ‘third wave of democracy’ that commenced in the 1970s and which occurred in southern Europe and later central and eastern Europe, but that in a way, in particular from the 1990s onwards, also affected the constitutional design of ‘established’ democratic states. 2 Constitutional dynamics are thus not restricted to new democracies in the making, but also involve established democratic regimes. What interests me here in particular is how the ‘trend over this period has been one of increasing public participation in the constitutional design process’. 3
In this chapter, I will look at one recent tendency in constitutional politics, that is, a (possibly increased) emphasis on a recourse to popular participation in the reforming of constitutional orders. There are now quite a lot of examples in contemporary Europe in which constitutional revision and amendment is orchestrated in such a way as to include the voice of the people. A transversal set of arguments included in these projects of constitutional revision is that they provide an explicit response to civic discontent and structural democratic defi ciencies and that reforms can only be successful if citizens and/or civil society are able to participate. In recent years, examples of such projects have taken place in Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Romania and, not least, the Convention on the Future of Europe. In addition, in the UK proposals are currently being made to set up
a Constitutional Convention that is to include citizens, following two decades of constitutional reform that included allusions to democratizing the constitutional order.
