Democracy, liberal representative democracy, operates by definition conjuncturally, through the cycles of periodic elections, but is ultimately judged historically, retrospectively. Democracy moves at the pace of short-term history, but the results of democratic choices often appear in the depths of long-term history.
The parallel rise of radical nationalism and the far right, the expansion of euroscepticism, the tendency towards illiberal democracy, the British decision for Brexit are individual phenomena that move - in different ways and at different speeds from country to country - on a common denominator which is the functioning, pathologies and resilience of Democracy.
However, the modern era, which has brought to the fore the integrated form of liberal democracy, has also highlighted the institution that seeks to reconcile the relationship between Democracy and conjuncture and History simultaneously. This institution is the Constitution.
When the process of enacting or revising the Constitution is underway, then the constitutional or revisionist conjuncture acquires the heavy and dangerous privilege of claiming historical characteristics. Then the danger arises that choices that are superficial, momentary, random, unprocessed, populist - or at least simply opportunistic - may acquire the maximum legal force of constitutional provision and appear as "historical". However, there is no worse form of populism than constitutional populism. This book seeks to function precisely as a counterbalance to constitutional populism.