Political sovereignty by its very nature enables the sovereign to make decisions about society’s operating rules, including the rules for the economy. The tension between constitution and economy goes deeper, because each also may appear to threaten the other, rather than simply to be a precondition for the other. sovereign – legal system, and without a legal system effective enough to ensure compliance. Presuming a self-regulating market mechanism, for example, raises the question of how such an efficient system can operate without a coherent – i.e. the political constitution) for stability and order. But at the same time, the economic system relies on the state (i.e. The economy likewise appears to be the foundation of the state, government appears to be “a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”, in Marx’s words. A similar tension exists from the point of view of the economic system. Economic life seems to be both at the disposition of the state and its basis. The constitution describes the process and values of self-government (whether more democratic or more elitist), implying a freedom of choice that extends to the conditions of economic life and yet, interests that gain wealth from the existing economic system influence the polity, making the latter de facto dependent on the economic system. The term “economic constitution” ( Wirtschaftsverfassung, constitution économique) brings into contact two systems key to the revolutionary and post-revolutionary era of the past 250 years, the modern constitution (and, with it, democracy) and the market economy (and, with it, capitalism).Ĭonstitution and economy, democracy and capitalism are in tension. Both cases raised the problem of how to articulate social-economic rules and political empowerment, especially within federations: the dilemma of the European Union as a system of economic rules and ‘constitutional’ structure. Next, it examines the radicalism of the Weimar Constitution, which, for many Social Democrats, opened up the possibility of social and economic transformation from the ground up, and faced a reaction from both statists and economic liberals. The essay first reflects on Physiocracy as an example of an attempt to impose market rules from above, which ran aground on the real practices of society in the 18 th century. The term ‘economic constitution’ brings that contradiction into focus. A constitution that defers to a certain economic system relinquishes its political sovereignty an economy that is open to the particular demands of a political system relinquishes its self-regulatory character. The market economy presumes a self-regulating system based on rules inherent to the market – which seems to preclude political interventions. ![]() The constitution describes the processes of self-government, implying a polity’s freedom to shape itself – including its own economy. ![]() The term ‘economic constitution’ brings into contact two systems, modern democratic constitutionalism and the market economy.
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