La pandemia del COVID-19 ha puesto al descubierto y ha exacerbado muchas de las debilidades de unas democracias occidentales que se articulan en torno a estructuras constitucionales nacionales y globales. Paradójicamente, la enfermedad ha tenido un efecto catártico. Por una parte, ha desvelado las disfunciones experimentadas por un Constitucionalismo y una gobernanza global que muestran síntomas de agotamiento y, por otra parte, ha despertado la conciencia acerca de las patologías que provocan la pérdida de legitimidad política y social del Constitucionalismo liberal democrático. En este sentido, el trabajo señala que una de las principales razones de los problemas desvelados por la enfermedad tiene que ver con la colonización neoliberal de las estructuras constitucionales liberales. Para ello, se analiza cómo la implementación de la agenda neoliberal tiene una plasmación jurídica mediante la constitucionalización nacional y global de modelos económicos y sociales que se sustraen del debate público y que entrañan, entre otras, una merma democrática importante de una sociedad que no se siente ni empoderada ni dueña de su destino. Estas circunstancias han desencadenado la irrupción de nuevas narrativas constitucionales, algunas de las cuales son abordadas por esta reflexión, llegando a la conclusión de que una lectura coherente de un Constitucionalismo liberal democrático que se resista a soluciones que supongan su repliegue al Estado-nación, pasa por una reformulación del orden global sobre unas bases constitucionales cosmopolitas críticas que reivindiquen una justicia global y política frente a la mera razón técnica auspiciada por la lógica del mercado.
Many of the flaws in Western democracies, which are based on national and global constitutional settings, have been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a paradoxical way, the disease has acted as a catharsis. On the one hand, it has exposed the dysfunctions of a Constitutionalism and a global governance that show signs of exhaustion, and on the other hand, it has raised awareness of the pathologies that result in the loss of liberal democratic Constitutionalism’s political and social legitimacy. In this regard, the article emphasizes that the neoliberal colonization of liberal constitutional frameworks is one of the primary causes of the problems revealed by the disease. To this end, it analyzes how the implementation of the neoliberal agenda takes legal shape through the national and global constitutionalization of economic and social models that are removed from public debate and that entail, among other things, a significant democratic decline in a society that feels neither empowered nor in control of its own destiny. These circumstances have triggered the emergence of new constitutional narratives, some of which are addressed in this reflection. The conclusion of the essay is that a coherent reading of a liberal democratic Constitutionalism that resists solutions involving its withdrawal to the nation-state, seems to require a reformulation of the global order on critical cosmopolitan constitutional foundations that claim a global and political justice as opposed to the mere technical reason sponsored by the logic of the market.
Summary:1. INTRODUCTION. DISEASE AS CATHARSIS. 2. NEOLIBERAL CONSTITUTIONALISM AND ITS PATHOLOGICAL CHARACTER. 3. DYSFUNCTIONS IN THE SYSTEM OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE. 3.1. The decline of the State and the demise of the social Constitutions. 3.2. The collapse of global economic governance. 3.3. The shortcomings of the global governance of health. 4. NEW NARRATIVES OF CONSTITUTIONALISM. 4.1. The readjustment of liberal Constitutionalism. 4.2. The politics of retrenchment and the return to the nation-state. 4.3. A critical global constitutionalism with a cosmopolitan view. 5. CONCLUSIONS.