Dimitras-Tsatsos-Institut für Europäische Verfassungswissenschaften, DTIEV-Online Nr. 1/2026.

„Verfassungsprozesse in Bewegung“, so das Thema unserer Konferenz, vermag ich nicht zu erkennen, schon gar nicht teleologischer Art, etwa in Richtung auf die vielbeschworene „ever closer union of the peoples of Europe“. Eher Ent- statt Verfassung, ein Ende von Verfassbarkeit im Sinne von Rationalisierung gewachsener und durch Verfassungsreform weiterzuentwickelnder Strukturen. Juristen lieben das Rationalisieren, Kodifizieren, kohärent Machen, widerspruchsfrei Zusammenfassen. Das kann ich nicht bieten. Wenn überhaupt, kann man sich die EU mit Hilfe des Garbage-Can-Modells komplexer Organisation$^2$ als anarchische Sammlung von „choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they may be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, decisions makers looking for work“ vorstellen – nur mit dem Unterschied, dass die EU nicht einfach eine Organisation ist, sondern eine internationale Organisation ohne demokratische Legitimationsbasis, mit demokratisch verfassten, also von der Zentrale aus gesehen risikoträchtigen Mitgliedstaaten, für sie eine Art Zufallsgenerator, unberechenbar sogar für Juristen. Von unten betrachtet hat das Handeln der EU zunehmend Konsequenzen für ihre Mitglieder, aus deren Sicht sich die EU von einem politische nice to have zu einem zu beherrschenden Problem entwickelt, das immer größeren Teilen der nationalen Wählerschaften unwillkommen ist: siehe das andauernde Wachstum „rechter“ Parteien, dass die EU sich statt auf Integration auf Desintegration hinbewegt, weil sie sich mit für sie unlösbaren Problemen, selbstgemacht oder aufgedrückt, überladen hat und die „organisierte Anarchie“ des Mülleimers anfängt, die Mitgliedsstaaten nicht nur Geld, sondern auch die Zustimmung ihrer Bürger zu kosten.

Heute fehlen der EU und ihren Mitgliedstaaten überzeugende und vor allem konsensfähige Antworten, wenn es um die zukünftige Rolle der Union nach der „Zeitenwende“ geht. (…)

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In: European Journal of Social Theory, 1-12

Will the destruction of Gaza, the extermination of its society end before it is completed? Not if the government of Israel, the majority of its citizens and the United States have their way. Israel will never make peace with the Palestinian people, not in Gaza, not in Jerusalem, not on the Westbank. As long there are Palestinians between the river and the sea, they will stand in Israel’s way—mission not accomplished. In fact, now, after 2 years of slaughter, peace, whatever its terms, would be nothing short of a national catastrophe for Israel, a devastating defeat. Peace would have to end the blockade of Gaza, which has by now lasted almost two decades, subsidized by four American presidents: Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump. Gazans would have to be released from their open-air prison, visitors allowed in. Pictures, many more than now, would find their way out of a ravaged landscape of irreparably damaged homes, schools, hospitals, churches, and universities. Stories would be told, of children without parents, parents without children, families without mothers or fathers, emaciated, starved, crippled in body and soul. Investigations would get under way, and not just by the corrupt, Israel-paid so-called Palestinian Authority: witnesses would be heard, memories recorded, events reconstructed, Israeli commanders responsible for the worst crimes identified, and genocide would cease to be a legal abstraction. The state of Israel would finally end up a pariah state, as Germany might have after 1945 had it not been for its American friends needing an ally-vassal against the Soviet Union and for the Korean War. “Enjoy the war, peace will be terrible,” Germans used to whisper to each other as WWII drew to a close.

No end in sight. The nightmare will go on, and will be allowed to go on, as long as there are still Palestinians that refuse to be ruled by the likes of Netanyahu. (…)

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In: Critical Review, 1-21

The German Wirtschaftswunder was not the result of economic expertise applied by Ludwig Erhard to postwar West Germany. There is no universally applicable theory-cum-practice of a “social market economy.” A capitalist economy is a political economy that requires an – always fragile – political settlement between capital and labour, one that needs to be re-negotiated on a current basis in the light of changing relations of power between the classes. To the extent that this requires expertise, it is the expertise of political practitioners, not of economists.“The economy” is not a second nature but a social battlefield..

François Godard’s book Germany, France, and Postwar Democratic Capitalims: Expert Rule – based upon his doctoral dissertation at the University of Geneva – could not be more ambitious: a history of post-1945 economic policy, indeed political-economic state-building, or democracy-building, in the two largest West European countries, Germany and France, complemented by two shadow cases, the UK and Italy, stretching out over nearly three decades. What we have here is, in short, high-grade historical institutionalism, driven by a dual program: empirically-historically, to show that West European postwar prosperity was owed, not to political compromise between capital and labor, but to states and governments applying expert knowledge on the economy to the economy; and theoretically-paradigmatically, to suggest that what counts in the world of democratic capitalism, and presumably not just there, are expert ideas, or “ideational models,” adopted and realized by government, rather than economic interests or the deals struck with and between them. (…)

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