Constitution

About: Constitution is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 37828 publications have been published within this topic receiving 435603 citations.

The Global Spread of Constitutional Review

Abstract: Constitutional review, the power of courts to strike down incompatible legislation and administrative action, is an innovation of the American constitutional order that has become a norm of democratic constitution writing. Whereas before World War II, only a small handful of constitutions contained provisions for constitutional review, as of this writing, 158 out of 191 constitutional systems include some formal provision for constitutional review. Some political systems, such as the United States, have developed vigorous constitutional review even without an explicit textual mandate. How did this institution, whose democratic foundations are so often questioned in its birthplace, become a norm of democratic constitution writing?

Iraq's Descent into Civil War: A Constitutional Explanation

Abstract: In the summer of 2014, the Iraqi government lost control of much of the country. Insurgents - including the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), former Ba 'thists, and an array of Sunni tribes - captured Mosul, and then much of western Iraq. Although complex factors lay behind these developments, this article focuses on one theme of central importance: attempts to consolidate power in Baghdad and the concomitant evisceration of Iraq 's constitution. When key provisions of a very decentralizing federal constitution were ignored or violated, the blowback from disenfranch ised groups in Iraq brough t the country to the brink of collapse.In early June 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and a constellation of Sunni Arab tribes and former Ba'thists captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Much of the Iraqi Armed Forces disintegrated, and the rest fled southward from the Sunni rebel advance.1 As most of the majority-Sunni Arab areas of the country quickly fell to the insurgents, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government scrambled to fortify Baghdad's defenses. Peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), meanwhile, took the opportunity to advance farther south and take control of virtually all the territories disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, including Kirkuk, which has some four percent of the world's proven oil reserves around it. As authorities in Baghdad stmggled to mount a response to the breathtaking developments, ISIS declared the establishment of a new Islamic caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq, and the KRG announced their intention to hold a referendum for Kurdish independence.2 More than ever before, the dissolution of Iraq suddenly appeared both likely and imminent.What precipitated such a collapse of one of the most important states in the Middle East and North Africa region? Rather than seeing a predetermined fate that doomed Iraq after the toppling of President Saddam Husayn, the explanation provided here focuses on agency - choices made within a structural context that offered real alternatives. The stmctural context presented huge difficulties to be sure, with a society and political system ravaged by wars, neighboring states meddling in Iraq, and a civil war raging next door in Syria since 2011. But explanatory weight needs to be assigned to the choices that Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and his administration made over the last several years as well. Although Prime Minister Maliki likely pursued his poli- cies with the best intentions, the highest authorities of a state bear the greatest onus to strengthen, not weaken, its constitutional foundations. While many people warned that the 2005 Iraqi constitution's strongly decentralizing provisions could threaten Iraqi territorial integrity, subsequent developments and the current crisis demonstrate the opposite: key elements of the Constitution's robust provisions for decentralization and power-sharing were never respected, leading to the total alienation of Iraq's disparate Sunni Arab and Kurdish populations. Even some Iraqi Shi'i political groups appear dis- affected today,3 reviving old militias to oppose Baghdad's authority. As Prime Minister Maliki assiduously worked to concentrate power in his own hands, American policy makers continued to back him almost unconditionally. In doing so, they squandered the blood and staggering sums of money spent rebuilding Iraq.The following pages provide an overview of the key components of the Iraqi con- stitution that Prime Minister Maliki's administration eviscerated. While an exhaustive treatment of all the varied factors that led to the current crisis in Iraq remains impossi- ble to provide here, it is the author's contention that the 2005 Iraqi constitution, despite its necessary ambiguities on many issues, provided a legal and political structure that could have led the country to a much more propitious future. This would also have re- quired wise and inclusive leadership in Baghdad, of course. …

Direct Democracy: Designing a Living Constitution

Abstract: "A crucial aspect of constitutional design is the provision of rules on how anconstitution is to be amended. If procedures for constitutional amendment are very restrictive,nchanges will take place outside the constitution. These changes are likely to be against thencitizens’ interests and their ability to influence the political process. We argue that thendevelopment of the constitution must be based on the rule of law. We propose directndemocratic rights that allow citizens to participate in the amendment process. The directndemocratic process of institutional change is theoretically and empirically analyzed. Annumber of counter arguments and issues for a gradual introduction are discussed."

The Ethiopian second republic and the fragile 'social contract'.

Abstract: Eighteen years after the change of power and the ushering in of the second Ethiopian republic in 1991, the political process in Ethiopia has, according to most observers, rigidified and largely closed the space for representative democracy. This paper will look at the main organizing political ideas or ideology of the current Ethiopian republic and to the nature of its governance techniques in the face of domestic and international challenges with reference to the debate on “failing” or “fragile” states. The new “social contract” defined after 1991 and codified in the 1994 Constitution is precarious. Dissent and ethno-regional resistance to federal policies are dealt with mainly by coercion and discursive isolation. Oppositional forces voice the need for a rethinking of the organizing ideas and institutions of the second republic in order to enhance political consensus and a shared political arena, but get little response. The paper will sketch an interpretation of governance in Ethiopia, focusing on the dilemma of reconciling local and modernist political practices, and will discuss the status of “republican” ideas, in name important in Ethiopia but mostly absent in practice. Explicit debate of these ideas is usually sidelined – also in academic commentaries – in favour of a focus on the ethno-federal ideology of the Ethiopian state.

The reform of the Athenian state by Cleisthenes

Abstract: There is little contemporary evidence for the history of Athens in the decade following the fall of the Pisistratid tyranny. Herodotus wrote some sixty or seventy years after Cleisthenes' reforms, and the internal history of Athens is for him incidental to other concerns. Membership in a deme constituted the most important indication of Athenian citizenship. The substitution of the deme for the phratry as the smallest political unit was one way in which the influence of the noble families was fragmented. The new tribal organization will have had an impact on legislation and policy-making. The Solonian constitution became much more populist than it had been under Solon. For disuse under the tyranny had brought about an eclipse of Solon's laws and had made Cleisthenes enact new legislation in his attempt to gain the favour of the masses. It was in this connexion that the law on ostracism was enacted.