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Description of  European Constitutional Imaginaries: Between Ideology and Utopia

0192855484 pdf This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. How can the EU be made legitimate and sustainable through (constitutional) law - and what is the role of constitutional lawyers and their ideas in creating this "sense of legitimacy"? This book seeks to answer these questions through the concept of the "constitutional imaginary": sets of ideas and beliefs that motivate and justify the practice of government and collective self-rule. Constitutional imaginaries are as important as institutions and office- holders, as they provide political action with an overarching sense and purpose recognized as legitimate by those governed. Constitutional imaginaries are 'necessary fictions' that make political rule possible, and at the same time they are ideologies which hide from view various forms of domination. Read more