Constitutionalism and Its Discontents: A Comparativist’s Take

For the Balkinization on Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric, Constitutionalism and Its Discontents (Oxford University Press, 2026).Sabrina Ragone There is much to admire in Mark Tushnet and Bojan Bugaric’s Constitutionalism and Its Discontents, beginning with the ambition and provocation reflected in its title. The book revolves around a fundamental paradox: constitutionalism seeks simultaneously to empower democratic self-government and to constrain the exercise of that very power. The three parts explore different manifestations of this tension: through the rules of ruling in Part One; through programmatic constitutionalism in Part Two, where the European Union and its economic constitution provide an example of how constitutional commitments intended to enable collective projects may themselves become constraints to democratic choices; and, in Part Three, through efforts to forestall or combat democratic decline, eventually shifting the focus from constitutional design to political…