| This project concentrates on the contemporary use of modern constitutionalist structures and institutions in forming or re-forming nation-states. In particular, I critically explore the advisability of uncritically implementing elements of modern constitutionalism in an attempt to construct social, political and legal institutions that are linked to the culture and social history of incipient nation-states. I contend that contemporary political and legal theorists fetishize liberal mechanisms to such an extent that alternative political discourse is all but truncated. I further contend that what passes for constitutionalism in the modern sense is a narrow set of formal positive institutional arrangements enunciated in a ceremonial document. I am specifically interested, then, in questioning whether the almost total reliance that theorists place in these formal positive documents is limiting our ability to construct social arrangements which might be better suited to mediate certain types of social interaction. The types of social interactions that increasingly characterize contemporary industrial and post-industrial societies are far more complex than those that prevailed during the time in which modern constitutionalism evolved. Using a variety of critical perspectives (from Rousseau and Hegel to legal theorists associated with the Frankfurt School), I question the extent to which the social, political and legal mechanisms of modern constitutionalism have any productive application in postmodern multicultural state entities. My project, then, is a deconstruction both of the liberal mechanisms employed by contemporary political founders to approximate their goals, and the grouping of these mechanisms into totalizing wholes which are designed to constitute the terms of social, political and legal organization. In so doing, I explore the question of whether positivist constitutionalism is sufficient to create and structure a healthy social group. I maintain that such a reliance on empty formalism is not sufficient to accomplish this task. Ultimately, I suggest that the organic elements of culture, tradition and social practices of a nation engaged in constitutional formation must be incorporated into a constitution in order for that text to be authentically linked to the forming or re-forming nation. |
