The decline of “middle-class constitutionalism” and the democratic backlash

Western liberal democracies are nowadays experiencing the decline of “middle-class constitutionalism”. A growing economic inequality is threatening the contemporary constitutional state and its political stability, eroding social homogeneity considered by Hermann Heller to be a necessary feature for a sound democracy. This process has significant democratic backlashes and political implications. Looking in historical and comparative perspectives at the dynamic balance between economic inequality and political equality, this article is mainly focused on the complex attempt to find a new form of capitalism’s democratic embeddedness within the new global context.