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In 2001, the Greek Parliament brought about extensive amendments to the 1975/1986 Constitution. It is not clear why it was thought necessary to proceed to an amendment on such an unusual scale, since the two largest political parties supporting the amendment, the ruling socialist party PaSoK & the conservative New Democracy, were in agreement that the 1975 constitution had worked smoothly throughout its history. It appears that the original plans for an amendment, as conceived by the aging leaders Andreas Papandreou & later Constantinos Mitsotakis, were driven by their separate but parallel intentions to strengthen the Executive over any other sources of power including Parliament & the courts. It is an interesting feature of the Greek political system that these plans largely failed. Parliamentarians of both parties ensured that the amended constitution did not alter the constitutional practice of the last 25 years. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract In this Essay I explore the impetus for the Seventeenth Amendment, which was in large measure driven by an effort to curb corruption in senatorial elections. I begin by exploring the difficulty of formal amendment in the United States. I explain the rules of formal amendment and I review briefly the empirical literature suggesting that the United States Constitution is one of the world's most difficult to amend, if not the most difficult. Then, I discuss the Progressive Era, a period of time during which formal amendment seemed much easier than it is today. I review the movement and its purposes, and I situate the four Progressive Era amendments. Finally, I focus on one of these four amendments, the Seventeenth, and consider the motivations driving its adoption as well as current critiques about its effectiveness. I conclude by questioning whether repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would necessarily reinstate indirect senatorial elections as a matter of practice, whatever it would mean as a matter of formal law.

This essay provides a commentary on article 195 (formerly 131) of the Belgian Constitution, i.e. on the provision which governs constitutional amendment in Belgium.

Gives the result of the year's constitution making by popular vote, including a tabular presentation of the vote.

AbstractSome constitutional scholars suggest that the US Constitution stands as one of the oldest yet least changed national constitutions in part because Americans' tendency to "revere" the Constitution has left them unwilling to consider significant changes to the document. Several recent studies support aspects of this claim, but no study establishes a direct link between individuals' respect for the Constitution and their reluctance to amend it. To address this, we replicate and extend the research design of Zink and Dawes (2016) across two survey experiments. The key difference in our experiments is we include measures of respondents' propensity to revere the Constitution, which in turn allows us to more directly test whether constitutional veneration translates into resistance to amendment. Our results build on Zink and Dawes's findings and show that, in addition to institutional factors, citizens' veneration of the Constitution can act as a psychological obstacle to constitutional amendment.

A summary of ten amendments to the State Constitution proposed in the 1949 session of the New Mexico legislature. ; A summary of ten amendments to the State Constitution proposed in the 1949 session of the New Mexico legislature. ; A summary of ten amendments to the State Constitution proposed in the 1949 session of the New Mexico legislature. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In this Essay I explore the impetus for the Seventeenth Amendment, which was in large measure driven by an effort to curb corruption in senatorial elections. I begin by exploring the difficulty of formal amendment in the United States. I explain the rules of formal amendment and I review briefly the empirical literature suggesting that the United States Constitution is one of the world's most difficult to amend, if not the most difficult. Then, I discuss the Progressive Era, a period of time during which formal amendment seemed much easier than it is today. I review the movement and its purposes, and I situate the four Progressive Era amendments. Finally, I focus on one of these four amendments, the Seventeenth, and consider the motivations driving its adoption as well as current critiques about its effectiveness. I conclude by questioning whether repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would necessarily reinstate indirect senatorial elections as a matter of practice, whatever it would mean as a matter of formal law.