Title: Anarchy as constitutional principle: Constitutionalising in anarchist politics

正如国家权力被视为解决国际组织弱点的一种方式一样，民族国家机构的合法性和权力也受到了广泛的质疑。权力下放和独立运动，文化、语言和区域自治的主张，以及脱离欧盟和整个政党，促使人们重新考虑处于现代政治核心的中央集权主义范式。这些宪法问题因资本主义危机及其产生的不平等而加剧。无政府主义在这些辩论中经常被摒弃：无政府状态与混乱和狂欢式巡回马戏团的联系深深植根于民众意识中。我们的研究将改变这种看法，并对英国、欧盟和其他地区的宪法辩论做出具体贡献。我们调查了无政府主义者对无政府主义的理解，并展示了他们的思想如何为思考宪政建立了新的基准。我们利用这一分析来重新思考无政府状态在政治中的地位，将从国际关系(IR)理论的见解延伸到政治理论，在IR理论中，无政府状态的潜在优点得到了承认，而在政治理论中，无政府状态的潜在优点得到了承认。我们积极地将无政府主义的理念作为自治政府的典范，并对混乱被理论化解读为缺乏宪政秩序的方式提出了质疑。该项目审查了三个国内和国际组织的章程：占领华尔街运动、世界产业工人组织和考利俱乐部合作社。与这些团体合作，我们希望了解无政府主义者如何宪政，以及他们是否成功地实现了自己的目标--这是更广泛地分析无政府主义做法的独特性的重要第一步。我们的关键问题是：对无政府主义的承诺会产生什么样的宪法原则和实践？共和党政治理论家为将自由重新定义为一项非统治原则所做的工作，为将无政府主义观点整合到主流政治中并考虑其观点的价值提供了新的空间。他们的想法是，自由不仅仅意味着拥有做事的权利，还意味着受到保护，不受无视我们利益的任意政策的影响：例如，引入人头税。他们认为，不受专制统治的自由为思考国内和全球领域的宪法原则提供了最好的基础。但在决定什么是专制统治时，共和党人在国家和资本主义内部进行监管。这有点像用古典作曲家制定的惯例来定义音乐：爵士乐、摇滚乐和雷鬼都受到了这一标准的影响。无政府主义者还将自由视为非支配，但他们辩称，这些机构以不公正的方式构建任意支配，他们试图通过对无政府状态的承诺来组织自己的协会，挑战由此产生的特权。在IR的研究中，无政府主义帮助我们以新的方式重新思考政治的潜力得到了突显，最近有人试图利用对无国籍部落群体的研究来质疑我们对一个没有国家的世界的混乱和暴力的假设。这些作家声称，没有理由认为没有国家的生活会像霍布斯所说的那样“肮脏、野蛮和短暂”。这些讨论与公共政策方面的工作不谋而合，在公共政策方面，研究表明，自组织网络相对于集中式分级管理的好处。我们的项目通过帮助我们了解无政府主义政治如何在实践中发挥作用，为这些领域的辩论做出了贡献。通过重新考虑现代政治核心的反无政府主义假设，这项研究将开辟一种批判性和激进的思维方式，有助于ESRC致力于思考一个充满活力和公平的社会的基础。

Just as state power is being championed as a solution to the weakness of international organisations, the legitimacy and power of the institution of the nation state is being widely contested too. Campaigns for devolution and independence, claims for cultural, linguistic and regional autonomy, as well as disengagement from the EU and political parties in general, invite a reconsideration of the statist paradigm at the heart of modern politics. These constitutional issues are exacerbated by the crisis of capitalism and the inequalities it generates.Anarchism is routinely dismissed in these debates: the association of anarchy with chaos and the carnivalesque travelling circus is deeply embedded in popular consciousness. Our research will transform this perception and make a concrete contribution to constitutional debates in the UK, EU and beyond. We investigate what anarchists understand by anarchy and show how their ideas establish novel benchmarks for thinking about constitutionalism. We use this analysis to rethink the status of anarchy in politics, extending insights from International Relations (IR) theory where the potential virtues of anarchy have been acknowledged, to political theory, where they have not. We deploy the idea of anarchy positively, as a model for self-government and we challenge the way that chaos is read into anarchy by its theorisation as the absence of constitutionalised order. The project examines the constitutions governing three national and international groups: Occupy Wall Street, the Industrial Workers of the World and the Cowley Club co-operative. Working with these groups, we hope to understand how anarchists constitutionalise and whether they are successful in realising their goals - an important first step for analysing the distinctiveness of anarchist practices more broadly. Our key question is: What constitutional principles and practices does a commitment to anarchy generate?The work that republican political theorists have done to re-define freedom as a principle of non-domination provides a new space to integrate anarchist perspectives in mainstream politics and consider the value of its perspectives. Their idea is that being free is not just about having rights to do things, but about being protected from the arbitrary introduction of policies that disregard our interests: the introduction of a Poll Tax, for example. They believe that freedom from arbitrary rule provides the best foundation for thinking about constitutional principles in the domestic and global realm. But in deciding what constitutes arbitrary rule, republicans regulate within the state and capitalism. This is a bit like defining 'music' by the conventions developed by classical composers: jazz, rock and reggae all suffer by this standard. Anarchists also adopt an idea of freedom as non-domination but argue that these institutions structure arbitrary domination unjustly and they seek to challenge the privileges that result from them by using a commitment to anarchy to organise their associations. In the study of IR, the potential for anarchism to help us re-think politics in new ways has been highlighted by recent attempts to use studies of stateless tribal groups to questions our assumptions about the chaos and violence of a world without states. These writers claim that there is no reason to think that a life without the state would be 'nasty, brutish and short', as Hobbes put it. These discussions chime with work in public policy, where research shows the benefits of self-organising networks over centralised hierarchical management. Our project contributes to debates in these areas by helping us see how anarchist politics works in practice. By reconsidering the anti-anarchist assumptions at the heart of modern politics, this research will open up a critical and radical vein of thought, contributing to the ESRC's commitment to think through the foundations of a vibrant and fair society.