Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Acronyms
- 1 New constitutionalism and world order
- Part I Concepts
- 2 Market civilization, new constitutionalism and world order
- 3 New constitutionalism and the commodity form of global capitalism
- 4 The rule of law as the Grundnorm of the new constitutionalism
- Part II Genealogy, origins and world order
- Part III Multilevel governance and neo-liberalization
- Part IV Trade, investment and taxation
- Part V Social reproduction, welfare and ecology
- Part VI Globalization from below and prospects for a just new constitutionalism
- Glossary
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Market civilization, new constitutionalism and world order
from Part I - Concepts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Acronyms
- 1 New constitutionalism and world order
- Part I Concepts
- 2 Market civilization, new constitutionalism and world order
- 3 New constitutionalism and the commodity form of global capitalism
- 4 The rule of law as the Grundnorm of the new constitutionalism
- Part II Genealogy, origins and world order
- Part III Multilevel governance and neo-liberalization
- Part IV Trade, investment and taxation
- Part V Social reproduction, welfare and ecology
- Part VI Globalization from below and prospects for a just new constitutionalism
- Glossary
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter advances several hypotheses concerning market civilization and then identifies key ideal-typical features of neo-liberal forms of state, and three principal elements of new constitutionalism. The latter furnishes central juridical and institutional mechanisms that underpin the power and discipline of capital in social relations (what I call disciplinary neo-liberalism). In my argument the law is not simply understood as ‘superstructure’ or indeed as a set of constraints on the exercise of authority of government; rather, law is seen as an active governing technique that is productive of political authority: it is seen as central to the constitution of the power of capital as well as neo-liberal forms of state, or political and civil society, in the emerging world order.
In that context, the principal hypothesis that guides this chapter is that we are living in an era in which there is an uneven, multi-scalar, crisis-driven and contradictory neo-liberal redefinition of the political on a world scale, consistent with the spread of an emergent global market civilization. With this in mind, and particularly in the conclusion, I address some of these contradictions and the potential for contestation and transformative resistance to disciplinary neo-liberalism, associated with the intimations of a post-modern Prince as a means to creating alternative forms of civilization and world order.
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- New Constitutionalism and World Order , pp. 29 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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