Constitution‐making and Citizenship Practice – Bridging the Democracy Gap in the EU?

Abstract

The article identifies the democracy gap as the tension in the European Union (EU) between demands for participatory constitutionalism and the limited capacity of constitutional engineering to meet them. It works with the concept of citizenship practice as the process that establishes the institutionalized terms of citizenship within a polity. The article argues that conventional views of constitutionalism have not accounted for a process that will bridge this gap; and uses the case of citizenship and constitutionalism to illustrate the paradox that, while there is a widespread consensus in favour of liberal democratic constitutional objectives and principles, constitutional agreements have faced significant opposition.