In: Peter Niesen, Markus Patberg, and Lucia Rubinelli (eds), Polities, in Peter Niesen, Markus Patberg, and Lucia Rubinelli (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Constituent Power.

Can the increasing involvement of external actors in domestic constitution-making be reconciled with the idea that constituent power belongs to the people subjected to the legal order it creates? Against the attempt to solve this tension pragmatically by distinguishing various degrees of ‘internationalized constituent power’, I argue that constituent power over domestic constitutions is, and cannot be, internationalized. I propose to recover the power-critical core of constituent power by understanding it as directed against unauthorized power, that is, against domination. This understanding shifts the key question away from the degree of influence as to whether external constitution-making is dominating. If external constitution-making is embedded in effective transnational institutions that prevent transnational domination, constituent power remains firmly in the hands of the constitution-making people who can authorize external involvement. If it is not, however, constituent power is not internationalized but rather usurped and effectively eclipsed—and the resulting domestic constitutional order unauthorized.

Find the full chapter here.