NEW FROM OXFORD BEYOND ORIGINS

Palestinian Yearbook of International Law, 2019

Political Theory, 2019

Contemporary Political Theory, 2018

It is not hard to explain why the politics of founding has become a recurring topic in contemporary democratic theory. On the one hand, the revolutions and democratic transitions of the late 20 th century made momentous new beginnings an almost daily spectacle. Widely perceived as signaling the triumph of constitutional democracy as the legitimate form of statehood on a global scale, these events stirred a fresh interest in constitutionalism and constitution-making. On the other hand, various global challenges constantly put more pressure on constitutional democracies and open their foundations to a relentless critical scrutiny. Consider, for instance, how an ever-

Trópoς: Rivista di Ermeneutica e Critica Filosofica, 2018

The article argues that the dominant approach on political foundings as standing in for ordinary political acts loses sight of their uniqueness as polity–establishing acts. Relying on Claude Lefort and Eric Voegelin, it recovers founding moments phenomenally and philosophically by distinguishing them from revolutions. Phenomenally, it argues that whereas revolutions follow a three–stage form of mobilization, downfall, and constitution, foundings are missing such a pre–defined form. Accordingly, revolutions can be understood in the consecutive time–sequence in which the event unfolded in history, while foundings are endowed with a form only retrospectively, through the effort to understand them. A founding, therefore, cannot be a pre–fixed discrete event in history but is found in the displacement of that event in time by the understanding effort. Philosophically, the nature of the problem of founding reemerges out of (a) the constitution of a founding act as the difference between the visible phenomenon and its invisible form, and (b) the common experience of philosophizing and founding as an act of resistance to the pre–existing political order. Accordingly, the social sciences may be more appropriate to the conceptualization and study of revolutions, political philosophy is more appropriate to the conceptualization of foundings and the hermeneutic sciences are more appropriate to the study of particular founding moments.

International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2012

2018

Both the subject who gives birth to a constitution and the time a constitution comes into being are part of the multifarious construct of the genesis of a constitution. The intertwinement of the constituent power (subject) and the founding moment (time) not only gives rise to issues at the centre of scholarship on constituent power but also speaks to ambiguities about the relationship between the founding moment and its ensuing constitutional order in constitutional theory. In this paper, I examine the question of the founding moment in constitutional scholarship in light of the antinomy between fact and norm. I argue that contemporary constitutional theories fail to account for the role of the founding moment in the constitutional order because they are absorbed in the narrow question of constitutional interpretation at the expense of making sense of the constitutional order. Drawing upon Robert Cover’s inspiring discussion of nomos and narratives, I contend that the founding momen...

Contemporary Political Theory, 2013

International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2012

In democratic theory, it goes without saying that people should establish their own political orders. However, the making of states or constitutions sometimes involves people with no intention of actually joining the new political order, as in the U.S.-led regime change of Afghanistan and Iraq or the UN administration of postconflict Kosovo and Timor-Leste. Could such policies be reconciled with the conviction that people should establish their own political orders? In this paper I will develop an affirmative answer to this question. The founding of a state is democratic-that is, constituted by the people subject to this foundational decision-when agreed to by as many persons as possible within and beyond the boundaries of the state to be founded. Hence, the very sense in which a state may have been democratically founded in the past presupposes an involvement of people beyond its current boundaries. Moreover, the moral values inherent in the practice of people constituting their own states do not imply restriction of power to the group of future citizens but protection of their autonomy, and, properly understood, the realization of this autonomy is contingent on people who will remain outside the state once founded.

Journal of the History of Ideas, 2018