Ricerc@Sapienza

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.