Constituent Politics and the Force of Law: Assessing the Role of Constitutional Discourse in the Debate around EU Legitimacy from a Historical Sociology Perspective

Abstract

This article deals with the relationship between law and power in the production of EU legitimacy. It argues that in order to account for specific challenges to EU legitimacy such as populism, a historical sociology approach is needed. After discussing this approach in the first part, this article highlights how law can play a role in processes of decivilization. In the last part, I apply this approach to the use of constitutional arguments in the debates around the Maastricht Treaty in France and Germany.