Todd A. Eisenstadt

Constituents Before Assembly (eBook, PDF)

Participation, Deliberation, and Representation in the Crafting of New Constitutions

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Under what circumstances do new constitutions improve a nation's level of democracy? Between 1974 and 2014, democracy increased in seventy-seven countries following the adoption of a new constitution, but it decreased or stayed the same in forty-seven others. This book demonstrates that increased participation in the forming of constitutions positively impacts levels of democracy. It is discovered that the degree of citizen participation at the 'convening stage' of constitution-making has a strong effect on levels of democracy. This finding defies the common theory that levels of democracy result from the content of constitutions, and instead lends support to 'deliberative' theories of democracy. Patterns of constitutions are then compared, differentiating imposed and popular constitution-making processes, using case studies from Chile, Nigeria, Gambia, and Venezuela to illustrate the dynamics specific to imposed constitution-making, and case studies from Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, and Tunisia to illustrate the specific dynamics of popular constitution-making.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Juli 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781316731659
• Artikelnr.: 48579856

Autorenporträt

Todd A. Eisenstadt is Professor of Government at American University, Washington DC. His democratization and rule of law scholarship includes his award-winning dissertation book, Courting Democracy in Mexico: Party Strategies and Electoral Institutions (Cambridge, 2004). His research has been funded by Fulbright, the Ford and Mellon Foundations, and the National Science Foundation. He has held visiting appointments at El Colegio de México, Harvard University, Massachusetts, the University of California, San Diego, and the Latin American Social Science Faculty (FLACSO) in Ecuador.

Inhaltsangabe

Introducing constitutions as political process; 1. A call to pens (even if
not mightier than swords): how context and process prevail over content in
constitutional change; 2. Making the constituents King: how constituent
deliberation on new constitutions democratizes more than mere citizen
participation; 3. Parchment politics: the importance of context and
conditions to the convening of constitutions; 4. The logic of 'top down'
elite constitutionalism: how imposed processes may (but usually do not)
produce better democracy; 5. The logic of 'bottom up' constitutionalism:
how popular processes tilt the odds in favor of democracy; 6. Interest
groups versus individual participation, and the gap between ideal
constitutional process and real world practices.