During recent years, constitutional issues have claimed increasing attention in many European countries. The social and political transformations in Central and Eastern Europe have thrust constitutional debates to the fore. This book looks at the needs and claims of constitutional adaptation and reconstruction in contemporary Europe. The different tasks facing Western, and East and Central Europe are considered in some detail. In Western Europe, constitutional debate has assumed greater prominence on account of closer economic and political integration within the European Community and internal changes within particular countries. In the East, far-reaching constitutional reconstruction has been an imperative, a task which has had to be tackled in the difficult and uncertain conditions of radical social and economic transformation.

Finally, issues of political theory presented by the notion of liberal constitutionalism itself are also addressed and the book throws some light on the direction of future change. The purpose of the Nuffield European Studies series is to provide, for students and teachers in the social sciences and related disciplines, works of an interdisciplinary and comparative nature dealing with significant political, economic, legal, and social problems confronting European nation-states and the European Community. It comprises research monographs as well as the edited proceedings of conferences organized by the Centre for European Studies at Nuffield College, Oxford.