What's Wrong with Depoliticization?

The tension between the cosmopolitan vocation of the economy and the national character of politics has lately reached a considerable level of pressure, as control over some political economic determinants of growth has been gradually acquired by EU institutions at the expenses of national political communities. In his book “Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe”, Michael Wilkinson calls this development a ‘depoliticization’ of fundamental decisions concerning economic and socio-economic relationships, a process which has culminated in the Maastricht Treaty. In my comment, I intend to explore the argument concerning depoliticization, by examining the relationship between economy and politics from a constitutional standpoint. While I agree with the author that depoliticization has been systematically translated into a political mode of screening decisions concerning economy behind the narrative of necessary and unavoidable developments within the European project, I take a difference stance on the meaning and risks of depoliticization. I shall argue that a certain form of depoliticization is intrinsic to any process of constitutionalization understood as a reflex of a political will. I then shall explain that European constitutional culture’s antipolitical prejudice may have at times transfigured depoliticization in a technique to tame and restrict disagreement.