Available in Russian
Author: Nataliya Varlamova
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2025-4-167-186
Keywords: constitutionalism; societal constitutionalism; constitutional pluralism; constitutionalization; coherence of legal order
Proponents of societal constitutionalism criticize classical constitutionalism for its focus on limiting the political power and its inability to counteract the authoritarian manifestations of other forms of social power exercised in various spheres of civil society. Societal constitutionalism positions itself as a theory that identifies trends in constitutionalization beyond the nation-state. It is characterized by its rejection of the public-law concept of the constitution and its focus on the constitutionalization of non-political spheres of society not directly related to the exercise of state power. Traditional “state” constitutionalism in this case acts only as a basic model for the processes of societal constitutionalization, offering the tools it has developed for limiting power — human rights, principles of the rule of law, democracy, and separation of powers. But each of the social spheres is capable of self-constitutionalization without the participation of the state on the basis of its inherent rationality and its own principles. However, the meaning, grounds, and methods of societal constitutionalization remain unclear. Societal constitutionalism asserts the plurality of social orders constitutionalized in one way or another and the network nature of the relationships between them, which inevitably gives rise to the problem of ensuring their coherence. The idea of a comprehensive constitution for global society is rejected by proponents of societal constitutionalism as idealistic. In search of mechanisms for coordinating various social orders within the framework of the emerging constitutional pluralism, it is proposed to turn to the instruments and procedures tested in international private law, as well as in the process of interaction between national courts and supranational and international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. At the same time, it is assumed that the meta-constitution formed in this way should not impose any substantial (essential, material) principles and will be limited only to procedural rules for resolving conflicts between existing “subconstitutional orders”. Societal “transconstitutionalism” will be of a purely “collisional” nature, which significantly distorts the very meaning of constitutionalism and makes the provided guarantees for limiting power uncertain.
About the author: Nataliya Varlamova – Doctor of Legal Sciences, Associate Professor, Leading Research Fellow of the Human Rights Department, Institute of State and Law, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Varlamova N. (2025) Sotsietal'nyy konstitutsionalizm: spetsifika konstitutsionalizatsii i problemа kogerentnosti pravoporyadka [Societal constitutionalism: the specifics of constitutionalization and the problem of coherence of the legal order]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.34, no.4, pp.167–186. (In Russian).
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