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5 Iustinianus Primus L. Rev. 1 (2014)
Reflections on Constitutional Culture of Transitional Societies

handle is hein.journals/iusplr5 and id is 562 raw text is: Slavifa Kovatevit, Ph.D.' Reflections on Constitutional Culture of Transitional Societies Abstract The paper represents an illustration used for understanding constitutional culture in transitional, post-communist societies. Using the perspective of constitutional hermeneutics, constitutional sociology and constitutional political science in the approach to this problematique, and being inspired by the practice of the abstract constitutionality outside the social and political milieu, the author starts with an integrated understanding of a constitution as a constitutional culture. A social and legal interpretation of the constitutional framework does not depend only on the linguistics of the constitution but also on the constitutional hermeneutics, and primarily, on the social and political prerequisites and the perception of constitutional legal culture of the subjects of social life. A reduced and one-dimensional interpretation of the constitution in post- communist societies is determined by an inherited anti-liberal tradition, which takes the form of ethnocentrism, paternalism and totalitarianism, supported by the transitional experience of the authoritarian legal populism. Key words: the constitution, constitutional culture, constitutional democracy, constitutional patriotism, ethnic and civic identity, culture and consciousness about human rights and freedoms. Constitutional Culture of Society The basic theoretical and methodological starting point of the discussion about constitutional culture is the difference between the normative-prescniptive and the empirical-descriptive understanding of the law, i.e. the constitution, as the difference between (a) a dispositive constitutional text or the written constitution, (b) the interpretative level of meaning of denotations and connotations used for comprehending and understanding the constitutional norm or, in other words, the constitutional hermeneutics, and (c) the real, practiced, effective, applied, hypostasised in the behavior of the subjects of the social and political practice or the real constitution. The above- mentioned threefold distinction leads us to an integrative understanding of the constitution as a structure made of linguistic, hermeneutic, institutionally-operationalized and empirical layers, which, viewed as a whole, represent the formation of constitutional culture. The constitutional history of post-communist, transitional countries is characterized by the existence of the constitution without the existence of the constitutional and legal state, i.e. the practice of a mono- ideological reduction of the meaning of the constitution. This also 1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law , University of Ni§ 1

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