Constitutionalism v. Populism – Are Britain and Germany less vulnerable than the USA?

The Moynihan Institute and the Center for European Studies welcomes Richard Bellamy from University College London, and the Hertie School in Berlin. 

Populism is often treated as the ‘dark side’ of democracy, best countered by strengthening constitutional safeguards. For example, Boris Johnson has been seen as being reigned in by the Supreme Court and in Germany there are calls to ban the AfD and render it unconstitutional. Yet the U.S. seems to tell a different story—nobody expects the Supreme Court to reign in Donald Trump. I shall argue that in all three cases the rise of populism can be associated with too little rather than too much democracy and that counter majoritarian constitutional constraints may be part of the problem rather than the solution.

Richard Bellamy is professor of political science at University College London (UCL) and a senior fellow of the Hertie School in Berlin. He is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and of the British Academy (FBA) and a member of the Academia Europea (MAE).

His publications include “Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition” (ECPR Press, 2014), for which he was awarded the Serena Medal by the British Academy, “Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy” (Cambridge University Press, 2007), which won the David and Elaine Spitz Prize in 2009, and “A Republic of European States: Cosmopolitanism, Intergovernmentalism and Democracy in the EU” (Cambridge University Press, 2019). His “Defending the Political Constitution,” is forthcoming from Oxford University Press and “The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory” (co-edited with Jeff King) is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.