Two Faces of Decisionism: Common-good Constitutionalism and Illiberal Democracy

Abstract

It could be said that the values and ideals of modernity lead to the establishment of the institutions of the democratic rule of law. It concerns a long and intricate manufacturing process whose outcome can be traced back to a complex set of theoretical insights and institutional commitments: principles of political and philosophical liberalism, constitutionalism, and deliberative democracy. Such a path is turbulent, although there is a constant presence among the critics of modernity. It refers to the anti-liberal perspective of some conservative approaches.
Contemporarily, the democratic framework allows us to trace the dimensions of this criticism both as regards representative institutions and the interpretation of the role and scope of the Law in the control of Executive acts.
Both approaches are linked to the movements initiated by plebiscitary populists in defense of illiberal democracy.
In this article, we seek to trace the bases of both arms of the critique of the liberal arrangement of constitutional democracies in the Schmittian influences on the reflections of illiberal democracy, a partner of the common-good constitutionalism.