Kaspar Ehrenzeller

Herdegen Matthias/Masing Johannes/Poscher Ralf/Gärditz Klaus Ferdinand: Handbuch des Verfassungsrechts, Darstellung in transnationaler Perspektive, LVIII + 1837 Seiten. Preis CHF 276.–. Beck Verlag, München 2021.

What is, why do we need and how does the legislative coordination of constitutional norms in contradiction due to approved popular initiatives work? The current study examines precisely these questions. More and more frequently, popular initiatives introducing conflicting constitutional norms that mutually terminate each other's effectiveness are approved by the Swiss population. As a result, government bodies are left behind with the mission to reconcile these norms. The present thesis shows that these governance issues are a phenomenon explicitly accepted by the Swiss state organization because the means of popular initiatives provide a right to object to particular forms of policy making. While processing the existing concepts on how to handle conflicting constitutional norms the current study demonstrates why the coordination of such constitutional norms is less a problem of interpretation but rather a reflective process to restrain power, to effectuate power and to moderate by leadership through the coordination of constitutional norms in contradiction. The present thesis develops a constitutional framework, which provides guidelines on the coordination of contradicting constitutional norms by the Swiss Federal parliament. Furthermore, it transfers the obtained findings into a useful typology to coordinate opposing constitutional norms. This categorization aims at facilitating the management of governance problems arising due to popular initiatives that raise conflicts by taking in to account the various intentions behind the concession of legislative competencies to shape approved popular initiatives.