Der Band versammelt die Vorträge der Internationalen Konferenz zur Verfassungsgebung in Afrika des Community Law Centers an der University of the Western Cape. In den Beiträgen werden Verfassungsgebungsprozesse in neun afrikanischen Staaten erörtert, darunter in Simbabwe, Kenia und Äthiopien. Reihe Recht und Verfassung in Afrika - Law and Constitution in Africa - Band 26.
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
When constitutional movements arise, they assemble broad coalitions out of diverse sectors of society. As a result, if successful, their effects extend far beyond formal law. Continue reading →
The broad objective of this paper is to better understand how national governments form their policy position on the Draft Constitutional proposal by analysing developments in Spain. It examines the Spanish position on various parts of the European Convention based on data from expert interviews carried out in November 2003. It then evaluates the internal coordination process, focusing on the few domestic-level actors (from the Prime Ministers' Office and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economy) that have been most influential in shaping Spain's position. Finally, it ponders the potential shift in the Spanish position given the recent Socialist victory in March 2004.
Constitution-making in Western Europe has shifted from the traditional post-war model and taken a deliberative turn, seeking full democratic legitimation, though most constitutional initiatives incorporating ordinary citizens have not been fully successful. To overcome this lack of efficiency, this article offers a normative model for deliberative constitution-building. The model formulates citizens deliberating systematically and massively in minipublics with formal institutions, epistemocracy, political parties, officials, and mass communication. It also transforms most of the normative ideals to those that can be regulated only by legal norms, avoiding dependence on citizens' ethical behavior. Only a few of them remain as recommendations for political consensus before starting constitutional change. The first part of the article describes general issues related to constitution-building from a deliberative perspective, such as the strengths and weaknesses of minipublics, political commitment before starting, and the scope of the future constitution. The second one describes its practical deployment and the role of each actor such as the parliament or constituent assembly, political parties, scientific and monitoring committees, the executive operator, participants, and general public; the design of the deliberative system and how to frame the debate; massive deliberation in equatable minipublics and their link with politicians, public opinion, and representative institutions; and, finally their connection to posterior constitutional decision-making phases through accountability.
This paper uses game theory to provide a common framework to address three questions: (a) Under what conditions is it possible for political elites in segmented societies to pursue accommodating strategies? (b) If elites choose such strategies over long periods of time, why do their followers continue to vote for them? (c) How can political institutions promote accommodating behavior?The essence of the argument is that political elites perceive the political situation as a game of chicken, while the masses may see it as a prisoners' dilemma or deadlock. When elites take into account electoral considerations, a weighting scheme determines the nature of the composite game. This game need not be symmetric with respect to the ranking of payoffs of the different players. The framework explains not only the major independent variable of the consociational democracies literature concerning the accommodating behavior of elites, it explains one of the major criticisms against this literature as well: the phenomenon of elite-intitiated conflict. The same game theoretic framework is used to explain how Belgian institutions work.
