Two Internal Critiques of Political Constitutionalism

The antagonism between legal and political constitutionalism has almost monopolized the discussion on constitutional theory during the last years. For this reason, political constitutionalism has been assessed mainly as an alternative to legal constitutionalism. Moving beyond this perspective, this paper intends to focus exclusively on political constitutionalism and its internal tensions. After having outlined the main tenets of this theory, two critiques are put forward, both concerning the understanding of the political element of constitutionalism: first, political constitutionalists propose a reductive account of the principle of political equality; second, their exclusive focus on ordinary politics as the centre of constitutional life is misleading and precludes a correct evaluation of constitutional politics.