Suchergebnisse

Growing public discontent with the performance and quality of many contemporary democracies makes them vulnerable to popular pressures to profoundly transform or replace their constitutions. However, there is little systematic academic discussion on the legal and political challenges that these events pose to democratic principles and practices. This book, a collaborative effort by legal scholars and political scientists, analyzes these challenges from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. It fills a theoretical vacuum by examining the possibility that constitutions might be replaced within a democratic regime, while exploring the conditions under which these processes are more compatible or less compatible with democratic principles. It also calls attention to the real-world political importance of the phenomenon, because recent episodes of constitutional redrafting in countries including Kenya, Poland, Venezuela and Hungary suggest that some aspects of these processes may be associated with either the improvement or the gradual erosion of democracy.

Negretto provides the first systematic explanation of the origins of constitutional designs from an analytical, historical and comparative perspective. Based on analysis of constitutional change in Latin America from 1900 to 2008 and four detailed case studies, Negretto shows the main determinants of constitutional choice are the past performance of constitutions in providing effective and legitimate instruments of government and the strategic interests of the actors who have influence over institutional selection. The book explains how governance problems shape the general guidelines for reform, while strategic calculations and power resources affect the selection of specific alternatives of design. It emphasizes the importance of events that trigger reform and the designers' level of electoral uncertainty for understanding the relative impact of short-term partisan interests on constitution writing. Negretto's study challenges predominant theories of institutional choice and paves the way for the development of a new research agenda on institutional change

The formulas for electing presidents and the rules determining the legislative powers of presidents are important variables for explaining the performance of presidential democracies. This article develops a strategic choice model to explain variations in these institutional features. Based on this model, it is proposed here that constitution makers are likely to opt for more-than-plurality rules of presidential elections when the number of parties necessary to pass constitutional changes increases. It is also proposed that the makers of constitutions are likely to strengthen the legislative powers of the president when the number of parties necessary to pass constitutional changes increases and when parties are decentralized. The argument is supported by a statistical analysis of the determinants of constitutional choice in Latin America. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)