Project description
A closer look at constitutionalism for collective identity
The decline of rights-based constitutionalism threatens democratic societies by failing to foster a collective identity. Once a framework for individual emancipation, it has become rigid, disconnected from politics, and alien to many cultural contexts. This conceptual weakness has allowed populist movements to fill the void, shaping collective identity around exclusionary cultural narratives that undermine individual rights. Previous efforts, such as constitutional patriotism, have failed to counter this trend. In this context, the ERC-funded RECONCILE project seeks to redefine constitutionalism as an integrative force, developing a new theory – identity constitutionalism. By analysing constitutional discourse in Europe and the MENA region, the project will explore how constitutions can foster unity through authenticity.
Objective
Constitutionalism provides a shared-meaning space, in which the idea of rights has served to emancipate individuals. This rights-based constitutionalism is in decline. It has ossified, became isolated from politics, and alienated from people in the West and faced difficulties to take roots in other cultural backgrounds. The problem is that the rights-based constitutionalism is unable to foster collective identity due to its conceptual limitations. Populist movements (secular and religious alike) thrive on this failure and forge a collective identity around simplified and homogenized cultural characteristics, which trumps individual rights and leads to exclusion and social injustice. The solution is to develop the integrative function of the constitution. So far, all attempts, primarily constitutional patriotism, failed. It requires nothing less than a new theory of constitutionalism (call it identity constitutionalism), which connects the philosophical tradition of intersubjectivity, discursive theories of constitutionalism, and social-cognitive perspective on identity construction.
I claim that such constitution-based collective identity is possible if constitution becomes central to political discourse. It happens under three conditions: (1) if constitution is perceived as authentic (constitutional authenticity), (2) creates a shared-meaning space for communication by incorporating major sources of local and global morality (normative compatibility) and (3) motivates actors to prefer constitutional speech over nationalist and religious ones through an adversarial institutional setting (institutional adversariality). To prove the hypothesis, I will research constitutions’ discursive centrality and the sense of community among citizens in four European (secular and Christian) and four Middle Eastern and North African (Islamic) countries through a hybrid methodology combining supervised computational analysis of political discourses and quantitative survey research.
Keywords
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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116 36 Praha 1
Czechia
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