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 postcommunist 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.