Project Details
Projekt
Populism and the Constitutional Re-Configuration of the European Union
Applicant
Professor Dr. Mark Dawson
Subject Area
Public Law
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532657320
This research project’s purpose is to consider whether and how EU law is affected by control claims emerging from national politics. The main element of control in focus is the rise of populist political parties and their engagement with European law principles and mechanisms. I define populists as political groups which carry three features: a unitary conception of the people, a preference for direct over representative democracy; and enduring distrust of independent institutions. Given the increasing prominence of such parties in European politics, understanding their attitudes and influence on EU law is an important scholarly objective. More concretely, the project asks: i) To what extent do populist groups engage with important doctrines of EU law, and through which mechanisms do they do so? ii) How does engagement vary depending on whether such movements sit in opposition or in government (and hence participate in EU political structures)? iii) How do the EU Courts institutionally respond to national political control claims, particularly through adjusting or re-enforcing key EU law doctrines/principles? By analysing both the challenge of populist control claims, and how these claims relate to evolution of EU jurisprudence, the project will seek to improve the unit’s understanding of ‘reconfiguration’ in relation to a core element of the contemporary EU, namely its legal order. While the EU legal order has often been seen as a crucial ingredient in improving the EU’s competence and enforcement capacities, the project will focus on whether populist involvement in EU law is likely to contribute to a growing logic of control emerging from the national level, limiting EU law’s ambition. It is envisaged that in a future second stage the project would examine strategies for EU law to stabilise itself in the face of political contestation from a comparative perspective (through comparison to other regional and federal legal structures).
DFG Programme
Research Units
