International Journal of Constitutional Law Advance Access originally published online on August 20, 2008
International Journal of Constitutional Law 2008 6(3-4):457-479; doi:10.1093/icon/mon017
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This article appears in the following International Journal of Constitutional Law issue: SYMPOSIUM: constitutionalism in an era of globalization and privatization [View the issue table of contents]
Constitutionalizing multilevel governance?
* Emeritus professor, Lancaster University Law School. Email: s.picciotto{at}lancs.ac.uk.
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Abstract |
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Multilevel governance entails transformations of statehood, leading to significant changes both in the public sphere of politics and the private sphere of economic activity and in their modes of interaction, the law included. The fragmentation of the public sphere and the decentering of the state have led to new types of regulation and the emergence of global regulatory networks, thereby intermingling the public and the private. The transition from government to governance blurs a clear hierarchy of norms and the distinctions between hard/soft and public/private law; it encourages a fragmentation of public functions. Renewed international legalization has been seen by some in formalist terms, as a way of providing some certainty and predictability; this view has been used to buttress the legitimacy of global governance Although there have been attempts to improve coordination between international regimes, they seem generally to spawn further regulatory networks; any formal constitutionalization of international regimes seems unlikely.
Work for this paper was conducted under a Research Fellowship from the Economic and Social Research Council for a research program on Regulatory Networks and Global Governance, Award RES-000-27-0117;