Constitutionalising Anarchy is easily one of the most thought-provoking and groundbreaking works on anarchist theory published this century. Kinna and Prichard masterfully bridge the gap between powerful examples of anarchy in action and intellectual histories of societal norms-making to challenge dominant statist paradigms. This is an urgent appeal for activists to further conceptualise their organisational structures and political theorists to take seriously the anti-state tradition of collective decision-making from below.

Kinna and Prichard show how anarchism, grounding and shaping an emancipatory politics, can offer an appealing and viable alternative to modern conceptions of politics as rooted in state sovereignty. Combining insights from a range of disciplines and attending to both historical and contemporary examples, they argue provocatively that, far from disregarding or attacking social order, anarchism embodies a conception of our common life that enables constitutional order to emerge from the bottom up.

Combining academic rigor with deep inside knowledge of its subject, this book is a major landmark in anarchist thought. Bridging anarchism’s fundamentals with contemporary theory and practices, the authors shed new light on the often-overlooked constitutional dimension of anarchism. This opens exciting directions for an anarchism deeply rooted in everyday life.

Kinna and Prichard not only make a convincing, counterintuitive case that anarchism is compatible with constitutionalism, they demonstrate that constitutional anarchy is the only institutional form appropriate for our contemporary world, where power relations have radically changed on the local, national and global levels. Constitutionalising Anarchy is an instant ‘must read’ in contemporary democratic theory.

This bold and original book is a springboard for reimagining constitutional politics without the state. Moving nimbly between political theory, history and rich empirical case studies, it uncovers a hidden tradition of anarchist constitutionalising and shows how anarchy can organise, rather than destroy, social order. Accessible yet rigorous, it offers activists and scholars a powerful new language for thinking about domination, democracy and global justice, and makes a compelling case that the future of constitutionalism lies in federated, bottom-up experiments in freedom and creativity.

Kinna and Prichard deftly uncover a neglected body of anarchist political theory and practice extending from Kropotkin and Proudhon in the nineteenth century to radical twenty-first-century movements such as Occupy and the Industrial Workers of the World. They untether anarchy from its connotations as constitutionalism’s nemesis. Their timely and masterful book brings anarchist thought back to the fore of public debate opening possibilities to think constitutionalism and anarchism beyond the state. A must read for all those interested in radical new alternatives.

Professors Kinna and Prichard have co-created an outstanding intellectual history and contemporary political theory and practice of participatory democratic constitutional anarchy at the local, federal, and global levels. They also argue for its superiority to state-based sovereign constitutionalism.

This book offers a thoroughly innovative take on constitutionalism. By unearthing the origins and inherently constructive aspect of ‘an-archy’, Kinna and Prichard present a most welcome novel take on anarchy as a normative organising principle in late modern times. Conceived in this way, anarchy enables us to grasp the full range of ‘constituent power beyond the state’ in appreciation of ‘post-colonial, liberal and socialist critics of domination and arbitrary power’. As such the book makes fascinating reading, a must-read, especially for students of International Relations but also for Political Scientists more generally.