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13 Ratio Juris 1 (2000)

handle is hein.journals/raju13 and id is 1 raw text is: Ratio Juris. Vol. 13 No. 1 March 2000 (1-30) Tocqueville's Question. The Role of a Constitution in the Process of Integration* GUNTER FRANKENBERG Abstract. Starting from the contemporary processes of fragmentation of societies (pluralization of individual lifestyles, the increasing ethnic-cultural diversity, de- solidarity, the melting away of political loyalties) and of dissolution of the nation (the erosion of the monopoly of the state, economic globalization), the author examines Tocqueville's question about what holds society together. This problem of integra- tion is analysed in the perspective of social and legal sciences. Accordingly, the author stresses that solutions to such a problem should come from a constitutional theory which is open to debates and answers developing in other disciplines, thus obtaining relevant information concerning the role of law and of constitution for integration.** I. Which Question? How can society escape its decline without a strengthening of the moral bonds as the political bonds loosen? (Tocqueville 1987a, 444). This question arose for Alexis de Tocqueville with regard to America, where equality places individuals side by side without a common bond holding them together (Tocqueville 1987b, 153). Updated and slightly modified, Tocqueville's question is presently undergoing a remarkable renaissance: What drives a society apart? What holds it together? With more or less apocalyptic under- tones, we are given answers referring to progressing, radical, and extreme processes of individualization, pluralization and de-solidarity, to the frag- mentation of the social element and the dissolution of the nation (within the supranational or global environment), the erosion of the monopoly of the state (in former East Germany), the melting away of political loyalties (everywhere), the pluralisation of individual lifestyles, and the increasing * Translation by Nils Junge. Abstract by Antonino Rotolo. D Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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