Supranational constitutional politics and the method of rational reconstruction

Abstract

In The Crisis of the European Union Jürgen Habermas claims that the constituent power in the EU is shared between the community of EU citizens and the political communities of the member states. By his own account, Habermas arrives at this concept of a dual constituent subject through a rational reconstruction of the genesis of the European constitution. This explanation, however, is not particularly illuminating since it is controversial what the term ‘rational reconstruction’ stands for. This article critically discusses the current state of research on rational reconstruction, develops a new reading of Habermas’ method and invokes this account for an explanation and evaluation of the notion of a European pouvoir constituant mixte.