New statehood (?) in the post-pandemic context: A reflection from the coordinates of the global market form

Abstract

Globalisation, as a strategy of rupture of the material relationship between the Constitution and the Social State form, has generated an erosion of the legitimising assumptions of state sovereignty of social constitutionalism in terms of depoliticisation. However, the multiple crises experienced by the globalising strategy, with particular reference to health, seem to have consolidated a revisionist discourse based on the revaluation of state sovereignty. Precisely, the aim of this paper is to analyse whether the health pandemic has led to a new context that makes possible the return of the state as a response to the problems of legitimisation posed by the global market order. To this end, the analysis will focus on the measures adopted by the European Union and its member states during the pandemic and post-pandemic phases. The special focus on the European order is due to the fact that it has given a normative nature to the structural principles of global market constitutionalism, being its most complete legal formulation. In parallel, the bulk of the reflection will be accompanied by the methodological premise of the material constitution for its explanatory force of the reality of the state form in the constitutional paradigm of the global market, diluting the mirages of constitutional politics and post-positivist-formalism.