Alexander Somek
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199542086
- eISBN:
- 9780191715518
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542086.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law, EU Law
This new and innovative study explains that a transnational regime is based on a conception of citizenship that is different from the conception underlying a constitutional democracy. Citizens are ...
More
This new and innovative study explains that a transnational regime is based on a conception of citizenship that is different from the conception underlying a constitutional democracy. Citizens are deemed to be essentially separate from one another. They abandon larger society to itself and pursue their good in the private sphere. In lieu of trust and reliance in their own power to bring about change through common action, they hope to benefit from entrusting ‘problem-solving’ to international networks of expertise. Put bluntly, citizens of this kind exhibit a strong commitment to individualism. The book shows how individualism is reflected in the regulatory authority that the Union claims for itself, in particular as regards the regulation of the internal market. The paradigmatic case studied in this book affects the regulation of smoking and the marketing of tobacco products. Throughout this book, continuity is established with two of the historically most influential modes of constitutional reasoning: the constitutional theory of the French revolution, on the one hand, and the ancient tradition of linking different types of public power with the composition of the citizen's soul, on the other. The study is true and original — unclassifiable in its line and style of argument. It is at one and the same time an essay in the contemporary history of public culture and taste, a study of European Union competence, an exercise in pure normative political theory, and a study in constitutional method and culture with much comparative and historical material.Less
This new and innovative study explains that a transnational regime is based on a conception of citizenship that is different from the conception underlying a constitutional democracy. Citizens are deemed to be essentially separate from one another. They abandon larger society to itself and pursue their good in the private sphere. In lieu of trust and reliance in their own power to bring about change through common action, they hope to benefit from entrusting ‘problem-solving’ to international networks of expertise. Put bluntly, citizens of this kind exhibit a strong commitment to individualism. The book shows how individualism is reflected in the regulatory authority that the Union claims for itself, in particular as regards the regulation of the internal market. The paradigmatic case studied in this book affects the regulation of smoking and the marketing of tobacco products. Throughout this book, continuity is established with two of the historically most influential modes of constitutional reasoning: the constitutional theory of the French revolution, on the one hand, and the ancient tradition of linking different types of public power with the composition of the citizen's soul, on the other. The study is true and original — unclassifiable in its line and style of argument. It is at one and the same time an essay in the contemporary history of public culture and taste, a study of European Union competence, an exercise in pure normative political theory, and a study in constitutional method and culture with much comparative and historical material.
