In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Adam K. Webb about his article “Supranational Governance and the Problem of the ‘Dignified Constitution,’” from Telos 195 (Summer 2021). An excerpt of the article appears below. Their discussion covers a range of topics, including the difference between the dignified constitution and the efficient constitution, the lack of a dignified constitution in supranational institutions like the EU and the UN, the domination of these institutions by the new class elite, the possibility of a global demos, the opposition of dignified constitutions to technocratic views of government, the insularity of some traditionalist arguments, and the current prospects for a broad global coalition. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 195 are available for purchase in our online store.
Supranational Governance and the Problem of the “Dignified Constitution”
Adam K. Webb
On the floor of the European Parliament in late February 2010, euroskeptic member Nigel Farage addressed the new president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. He expressed disappointment at the choice of what amounted to the European Union’s first head of state: “You have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.” Ten weeks later across the Channel, the close-run British general election generated five days of coalition talks. The dealmaking over, David Cameron was then formally appointed as prime minister by the Queen, in a deferential ritual of “kissing hands,” elements of which dated back some three centuries. During the backroom negotiations, the Queen had remained aloof in her role as a nonpartisan head of state. In the language of the nineteenth-century journalist Walter Bagehot, the “efficient” sphere of parliamentary politics was kept distinct from the “dignified” sphere representing the peak of the state.[1]
Supranational institutions like the European Union and the United Nations have grown in importance over recent decades. A long view of global integration and state formation suggests that, however distant the time horizon, such layers of governance eventually will come to matter a great deal. As supranational institutions gain heft, offices like the EU presidency and the UN secretary-generalship will gain visibility too. Here we discover a puzzle, however. While there has been plenty of attention to the “efficient” aspects of supranational governance—how to empower, constrain, or redirect such emerging machinery—almost none has been paid to the “dignified” aspects. What does it mean to imagine the head of state role and its surrounding pomp and rituals, above the familiar unit of the territorial nation-state? This blind spot for the supranational “dignified constitution” is at least atypical in the history of state formation and the consolidation of legitimacy.
In the following pages, I want to examine this blind spot and its implications. After first reviewing the function of the “dignified constitution” at the national level, I run through possible explanations for its absence in the likes of the EU and UN. I consider the more obvious factors, such as the thin common identity and symbolism among nation-states, the social leveling and anti-traditional temper of modernity, and the weakening of deference that often sustains due respect for gravitas. Then I dig into deeper reasons having to do with how people understand sacred boundaries around the state, the nature of founding processes, and metaconstitutional guarantees. In short, I argue that the blind spot for the dignified constitution is more than merely a quirk of modern style. It has to do with the character of global institutions and the grounding of authority.
While some of my conclusions are necessarily suggestive—given that global governance is in an early stage—they do have potentially controversial implications. They cast doubt on whether the current trajectory of global governance, given its technocratic routinizing of power without dignified underpinnings, can secure legitimacy or liberty in the long term. They also suggest the need for well-founded institutions of global governance quite unlike those of the modern state. A global constitutional settlement instead should fetter political power within a more pluralistic framework, which the dignified elements in turn would represent.
National Dignified Constitutions
Bagehot coined the concept of the dignified constitution in his 1867 book The English Constitution, which has since become a classic text as well as a handbook for British monarchs in training. He identified in any constitutional structure two parts: “First, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population—the dignified parts, if I may so call them; and next, the efficient parts—those by which it, in fact, works and rules.” British politics was efficient because of the tight link between a parliamentary majority and the cabinet. The Crown stayed above politics and, hallowed by age, inspired a simple reverence among ordinary people. The latter, being “narrow-minded, unintelligent, incurious,” needed the “theatre” of the dignified constitution to inspire loyalty and to make a substantially republican state more comprehensible. The emotional and irrational aspects were indispensable. To try making monarchy more transparent or more modern would be to “let in daylight upon magic.”[2]
While the concept of the dignified constitution came out of a specific historical context, the twentieth century proved that Bagehot’s insights travel well. The British monarch’s “reserve powers” to dissolve Parliament and choose a prime minister are exercised mechanically on advice by the government of the day, though in theory they remain as a last check on political ambitions that might endanger constitutional arrangements. Longer-serving monarchs have an informal ability to “advise” and “warn” prime ministers out of the public eye.[3] Other countries like Spain and Japan have relied on monarchy to symbolize continuity and bridge deep divides. The Spanish monarchy was refounded after a divisive civil war and four decades of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.[4] The king also helped suppress a right-wing coup attempt in 1982, for example, by donning military uniform to urge the troops to return to the barracks and respect the democratic constitutional settlement. Japan’s emperors were mere figureheads when the shoguns held “efficient” power, and after 1945 were designated a symbol of the nation. Deference to them persisted amid rapid postwar social change.[5] In republics, too, the style of office also reflects particular traditions: from the self-effacing German presidency to the majestic pomp surrounding the French president in his head of state role.
The emphasis varies depending on the national experience, yet any dignified constitution must serve one or more typical purposes: symbolizing continuity, deference to authority, the horizontal cohesion of a community, and/or the humbling of partisan political ambitions.
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1. Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (London: Chapman and Hall, 1867), p. 5.
2. Ibid., pp. 2, 5, 7, 52–54, 70, 86.
3. Vernon Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 1–41, 62–63, 73, 288, 308.
4. Paul Preston, Juan Carlos: A People’s King (London: Harper Collins, 2004).
5. Naoki Kojiro, “The History of the Tennō (Emperor) System and Its Role in Japanese Politics,” in Forms of Control and Subordination in Antiquity, ed. Yuge Toru and Doi Masaoki (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), pp. 24–29; Warren M. Tsuneishi, Japanese Political Style: An Introduction to the Government and Politics of Modern Japan (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 2, 25–35, 55–60, 181; Kenneth J. Ruoff, The People’s Emperor: Democracy and the Japanese Monarchy, 1945–1995 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 52, 99, 118–19, 202–53.
