Supervision: Prof. Dr. Johan Vande Lanotte
Researcher: Dr. Jurgen Goossens
Sponsored by FWO (2016-2019)
Authors and policymakers have indicated that there is a crisis of democracy. At the same time, however, a debate is going on about revitalising democracy through citizen participation. There has particularly been a proliferation of direct democracy to pursue constitutional change. Several referendums took place and randomly selected citizens were involved in innovative projects to rewrite the Constitution. Nevertheless, this wave of citizen participation in shaping constitutional foundations and values, which lies at the heart of democracy, has not yet sufficiently been analysed.
Therefore, this project will conduct a comparative legal analysis regarding the suitability and necessary constraints of popular constitutional law-making, which may be useful for constitutional designers, legislatures, judges and the People themselves. The project will tackle four main topics: