Constitutional Mobilization and Contestation in the Transnational Sphere

The debate on the constitutionalization of European and transnational law pays little attention to the role of civil society and social movements. While civil society involvement in private litigation increasingly receives attention, the critical, counter‐democratic role of transnational movements in a broader, public sense, is largely ignored. The significance of democratic claim making, public demands, and contestation, and the normative dimensions as well as constitutional implications of such engagement, are insufficiently explored. This article discusses the theoretical and analytical dimensions of legal and constitutional mobilization and explores different forms of civil society action before considering a plurality of legal rationalities as articulated in public claims, as well as the issue of counter‐hegemonic struggle. Then, it develops a political‐sociological approach, which, in the final part, is used in a case‐study of the water rights campaign, exploring the different types of legal mobilization involved (including the European Citizens’ Initiative) and a variety of normative claims being endorsed.