TITLE DETAILS:
The Defence of Constitutionalism
The Czech Question in Post-national Europe
Přibáň Jiří
Karolinum 2017
published: September 2017
e-book
ISBN 9788024634241 (PDF)
ISBN 9788024638249 (epub)
ISBN 9788024640082 (mobi)
Also available as
PRINTED BOOK
-
annotation
More than a century after the publication of Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s study The Czech Question, Czech politics has become a pragmatic question of democratic constitutionalism and civility. Originally published in major Czech newspapers, these essays on contemporary European politics demonstrate that this new understanding involves both technical questions of power-making and critical questions of its meaning. Democracy, Jiří Pribán shows, is the proces of permanent self-correction. It possesses both the capacity to respond to unexpected problems and crises and intrinsic tensions between principled arguments and everyday administrative processes. Defending constitutionalism, therefore, draws on principles of civil rights and freedoms, limited government, and representative democracy, the validity and persuasive force of which are at stake not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the European Union and our global society at large.