Constitutional Adjudication and Consociational Democracy

The research project Constitutional Adjudication in the Crisis of Consensus Democracy deals with the transformation of the Austrian Constitutional Court and the Swiss Federal Tribunal into players in major political conflicts. In Austria and Switzerland, for much of the second half of the 20th century, major political conflicts have been dealt with within the political process and outside the courts. Yet, since the early 2000s this has started to change. Today, the Austrian Constitutional Court and the Swiss Federal Tribunal play an important role in key political conflicts of our time. They decide on highly divisive issues, such as conditions for acquiring or losing citizenship, the level of minimum social benefits for foreigners or the legality of deepening European integration. The research project investigates this development from a comparative perspective, enquires into the respective reasons for these transformations and into their constitutional and democratic implications. The project puts forward one main hypothesis: The transformation of constitutional adjudication in Austria and Switzerland can be understood and should be assessed against the backdrop of what has been described in the social sciences as a crisis of consensus democracy in Austria and Switzerland. For a long time, Austria and Switzerland have been described as prototypical consensus democracies. Today, however, political life in both countries is increasingly coined by conflict and competition. The project, first, aims to understand how the crisis of consensus democracy has affected constitutional adjudication in Austria and Switzerland. Are political conflicts increasingly relocated from the political process to the constitutional courts? Has the rise of conflict and competition in the political systems affected the courts ways of dealing with constitutional controversies? How are the procedures and the independence of the two courts affected if they increasingly act in the public limelight? Second, the project investigates whether, and if so, how the two courts need to adapt to the context of a more competitive and conflict-laden political system. Does the courts role within the constitutional systems need to be redefined and if so, how should it look? The comparative method allows to contrast the Austrian and Swiss experience and to potentially learn from each other.