Center Extremism in the Constitutional Question

Abstract

This article discusses concepts such as “constituent power”, “constituted powers”, “constitution” and the like to explain that the way in which they are discussed and understood in normal times is inadequate for constitutional moments. The distinction between normal and constitutional moments is given a purely political content, as designating the difference between (normal) moments in which constituted institutions are taken as given, so that the question “Why are they as they are?” is purely “academic”. In constitutional moments such a question becomes politically relevant. This article characterises what it calls “centrist extremism” as one important obstacle to the understanding of the ongoing Chilean constitutional moment.