A Constitutional Paradox, Politics, and Rationality Today
A Constitutional Paradox, Politics, and Rationality Today
PLCY – 703 Contemporary Challenges to Constitutional Order and the Role of the State
Leonard Fikes
October 14, 2020
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A Constitutional Paradox
The constitutional democracy’s paradoxes can seem so troubling that suggested
solutions are light in comparison. Following the general sovereignty principle, which has a
long history in Western democratic lawmaking, tradition holds that individuals ought to
consent to the laws under which they live. Democratic citizens experienced issues when they
must depend on the law to establish themselves as a lawmaking body. Democratic lawmaking
turns into a paradoxical when it must create the very situations for its institutions. Such a
paradox is identified by Frank Michelman, an American legal scholar at Harvard University,
who refers to it as the founding paradox. The founding paradox demonstrates that a political
and legal order cannot be founded democratically, not in a legitimate practical sense, says
Kevin Olson, author of Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy (2007). For the Founders to
create a democratic Constitution, they must have comprehended what it implies to be a
people that will form a Constitution. They needed to establish themselves as a group,
determining who is entitled to participate in the process of the Constitution’s formation and
who is not. The Founders also needed to agree on the approach to employ to create laws and
Constitutional forms to be adopted. Since this was a democratic procedure, the public’s
comprehension of their mutual understanding needed to be public and shared. The founding
paradox revolves around legitimacy. The inability to follow the right procedure brings in the
question of legality. However, according to Olson (2007), it would not be an issue to generate
illegitimate laws de novo system. Government officials could implement these laws only by
force, where people will obey the rules or face the consequences. Such kind of laws, created
by lawmakers, would be made without technical guidance. Their creation would rely on
someone’s procedurally, unilateral, and unregulated will. Thus, they would not be natural
laws (Olson 2007).
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Political Rationality
Political rationality is a specific, power, knowledge-based regime that is not a
governmental practice instrument. Instead, it is the condition of legitimacy and possibility of
its devices, the normative field of reason from which governing is forged. Political rationality
has imposed itself and grown throughout western societies’ history. It initially gave its stance
on the pastoral power idea, then on that of the state’s reason. Its inevitable impacts are both
totalization and individualization. Liberation can only come from attacking one of these two
impacts and the very roots of political rationality. Political rationality varies from a normative
kind of reason, although the former originates from and is covered with the latter.
Neoliberalism may have remained a basis created by ordoliberalism long before it turned into
political rationality. Political rationality could be perceived to signify the actual turning of a
particular normative kind of reason. It describes such a form as both a historical force relating
and generating a specific type of state, society and subject and creating an order of truth via
which conduct is both measured and governed (Cornelissen 2018).
Statesmanship
Statesmanship refers to morally, excellent, and polity leadership. Journalists and
historians, among others, usually attribute statesmanship to an inordinate political figure that
has led their country through times of crisis and war. It is an extraordinary politician that
practices wise leadership. In the purest logic, statesmanship equates to the political rule idea,
where politics is comprehended to imply an architectonic or comprehensive perspective.
Centered on a molding personality and leading citizens through contingencies stream, in the
context of the fundamental law, and via essential reliance on a mix of coercion and
persuasion regarded as politics. The statesmanship’s activity or art is distinguished by its
objective to acquire the general good in adhering to the contingency stream. Its scope, which
is the major activities in people’s lives, and its means, which is political, is a blend of
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coercion and persuasion in the fundamental law framework, replicating prudent judgment
(Overeem and Bakker 2016).
Government Change over Decades
The United States’ Founders created the government with an explicit restriction on
federal powers and a strong dependence on religious principles. The disintegration of their
ideals and the present departure from their original intent did not happen overnight. Revoking
the separation of powers, limiting public religious expressions, seizing state powers, and
destroying the state and church cooperative relationship has each been a slow process
straddling for years. The entire foundation for America’s successful political existence was
provided by George Washington during his Farewell Address when he affirmed morality and
religion as an indispensable support to political prosperity, good governance, and national
well-being (Barton 2011). The perception of religion as the foundation of American politics
changed with the establishment of the Constitution and consecutive amendments, resulting in
the separation of church and state, giving the state government the power to act without
consulting the religious values. The perception of morality as the foundation of America also
changed with evolution, where minority groups fought for different rights, including the
legalization of abortion and same-sex marriages, resulting in the enactment of laws that
undermined the country’s moral foundation (Barton 2011).
The judicial branch of the United States’ government also made a significant
contribution to changing the United States government’s operations. The Supreme Court
adopted the leading role in interpreting the United States’ Constitution. The Court has made
various rulings that have changed the government’s ways of perceiving laws and operations.
The Court has played a significant role in changing the country’s culture. The Court
influenced the formation of law and the interpretation of rules made by Congress. The Court
also played a significant role in adopting regulations that eroded the nation’s Founders’ initial
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cultural and moral values. While it is hard to go back to the initial intended position, Brian
Danoff and L. Joseph Herbert, authors of Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Democratic
Statesmanship (2011), encourages the states not to be carried away by the change of life
events, but to focus on the virtues of democracy and preserve the influential culture of the
foundation of the country.
Bibliography
Barton, D. 2011. Original Intent: The Courts, the Constitution, and Religion. Aledo, Texas,
WallBuilders.
Cornelissen, Iars. 2018. “What is Political Rationality?” Parrhesia Journal 39: pp.125-162
Danoff, B. & L. J. Herbert. 2011. Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Democratic
Statesmanship. Lantham, MD: Lexington Books.
Olson, Kevin. 2007. “Paradoxes of Constitutional Democracy.” American Journal of
Political Science 51, no. 2: pp. 330-343.
Overeem, Patrick, and Femke F. Bakker. 2019. “Statesmanship Beyond the Modern State.”
Perspectives on Political Science 48, no. 1: pp. 46-55.
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