Tag Archive for ‘Constitutional Law’

“Hope is not passive”: Constitutionalizing Youth Representation in Governance and Policymaking to Combat Climate Change

“Hope is not passive”: Constitutionalizing Youth Representation in Governance and Policymaking to Combat Climate Change

By Sharon Pia Hickey

The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s (“International IDEA”) “Global State of Democracy Report 2021” has recently described how, while the number of democracies is increasing, the quality of democratic governance has fallen. Covid-19, in particular, has exacerbated the fault lines that were widening before the pandemic struck. For many (especially in the Global North), the experience of lockdowns, restrictions, fear, and scarcity was the first taste of what life might be like under emergency conditions caused by climate change. While the jury is still out on how the world handled the pandemic, it is clear that innovation, solidarity, and commitment will be needed to sustain democracy in the face of the ever-increasing manifestations of climate change. [. . .]

Populism and Constitutionalism in East-Central Europe

Populism and Constitutionalism in East-Central Europe

By Gábor Halmai.

The recent deviations from the shared values of constitutionalism towards a kind of “populist, illiberal constitutionalism” in East-Central Europe raise the theoretical questions: are populism and illiberalism what the leaders of these backsliding states proud of, reconcilable with constitutionalism? I shall concentrate on a particular version of populism, which is nationalist and illiberal, and mainly present in Hungary and Poland, and in other countries of the region. Most are also members of the European Union, a valued community based on liberal democratic constitutionalism.  The arguments set forth below about East-Central European populist constitutionalism in this paper do not necessarily apply to other parts of Europe (Greece and Spain), Latin-America (Bolivia), or the US, where populism has a different character, and its relationship to constitutionalism is distinct from the Hungarian or the Polish variant. […]