Constitutionalism and New Governance in the European Union: Rethinking the Boundaries

This paper examines the relationship between constitutionalism and New Methods of Governance (NMG) in the EU. It argues that in many respects the relationship is one which tends to challenge, marginalise or misrepresent NMG. In particular, those state-derivative aspects of constitutionalism in the EU which emphasize the themes of hierarchy and selfcontainment threaten respectively to consign NMG to a position of minor significance and to ignore the potential of NMG as a bridge between European and national systems. Alternatively, a more reflexive approach to constitutionalism which retains the state derivative-idea of constitutionalism as a realization, and indeed as a form of mobilization, of political community, but discards some of this command and control orthodoxies as inappropriate to a more institutionally dispersed and socially responsive polity promises to capture the normative potential of NMG more effectively