Recapturing Concepts: Beyond Rule of Law Minimalism in the European Union
To what extent has the rule of law as a concept been captured by the language of nondemocratic partisan actors in the European Union, and how can individuals and communities committed to constitutional values help recapture it? Max' project remedies the gap in scholarly analyses of rule of law discourses. It introduces ‘conceptual minimalism’ as a discursive strategy pursuing the logic of ‘anything goes’, whereby the conceptual label and its content become disconnected from each other. Focusing on jurisdictions with a legacy of hierarchical approach to knowledge production as particularly vulnerable to concept capture, and considering evidence on frontrunner dedemocratizers within the EU, the project studies the discourses on the rule of law with emphasis on Hungary and Slovakia in the past decade. The project aims to develop, in interaction with academics and rule of law practitioners, a tangible framework for classifying rule of law representations in public discourses. Subsequently, it aims to apply this framework to analyse both internationally accessible and local discourses on the rule of law by scholars in the EU context in Hungary and Slovakia. By identifying the extent of conceptual minimalism, it expects to also pinpoint the sources and actors that remain resilient towards it.
