Subnational deliberative constitutionalism

The paper addresses the field of subnational deliberative constitutionalism. It conceptually reflects on this yet understudied field of research that bridges deliberative democracy, the politics of public engagement in decision-making, and constitutional theory and practice. In its empirical part, it refers to examples of subnational constitution-making throughout Europe. In doing so, it adopts a broad definition of constitution and thus refers to plural decision-making processes in matters that are of fundamental importance for the respective subnational system. The paper highlights how processes of subnational constitution-making have been organized and carried out, and it identifies factors that had affected the processes, positively or negatively. Where relevant, special attention is paid to the working of participatory constitution-making in ethnic minority contexts, in the presence of institutionalized multilingualism. While very different in origin, procedure, and results, the case studies the paper refers to (in the main South Tyrol, Trentino and East Belgium) have two issues in common: First, they proceed from the contemporary crisis of representative decision-making processes or, more precisely, the crisis of legitimacy of the ‘infrastructural and procedural corset’ of contemporary decision-making processes. Second, they test the institutionalization of (permanent) democratic innovations to better accommodate popular participation in the management of the public good. The paper concludes by arguing for a more thorough