General
The central premise of IP1 is that a continuous process of "constitutionalisation" is taking place internationally. While the ability of individual governments to regulate transboundary problems on their own tends to be weakened by globalisation, international institutions and mutual commitments have proliferated. There is a need for insight and recommendations on how the decline of unilateral regulatory authority is to be compensated for. The emergence of multilayered governance and the convergence towards a quasi-constitutional order suggest themselves as platforms of enquiry.
IP1 will address three questions.
- What does constitutionalisation entail for states, their citizens and international governance?
- How, if at all, could it be steered to promote the delivery of global public goods and the soun management of transboundary problems?
- How does the WTO position itself in this context?
The answers to these questions are expected to be both descriptive and prescriptive, combining scholarship from international law and political science to provide a holistic account.
The approach of IP1 will be to formulate a model of transnational constitutionalism with high explanatory power. To this effect it will:
- evaluate developments currently associated with transnational constitutionalism by distinguishing between "constitutionalist" and "anti-constitutionalist" trends;
- assess the policy benefits as well as the negative effects of constitutionalisation; and
- apply and test the model against the concrete findings of the other NCCR projects being undertaken.
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Research Projects 
