The essay presents and explains a highly stylized story of the reactions of the structure of a university to a constitutional reform – in the university law – that radically changed the power structure from a bottom-up representative system to a top-down hierarchical system practically...

Can a constitution born in dictatorship serve democracy, or is it inevitably tainted by the circumstances of its birth? This question is central in Chilean politics today, but Chile is not alone. Roughly 20% of constitutions in force today were drafted during undemocratic periods. Chile’s...

This paper seeks to provide a critical theoretical comparative review of the effect upon democracy, constitutional reform could have on new smaller states. This paper posits that it is an untried, untested assumption that democratisation will follow, if nation states’ populations choose...

The separation of powers in a state is an essential characteristic of every democratic country, a principle present in many constitutions, most notably that of the United States. The concept is imperfectly fulfilled in the United Kingdom, given that the executive (Ministers) form part of the...

Immediately after the announcement of the re-election of President Kibaki on the evening of 30 December 2007, Kenya was thrust into the worst civil unrest experienced by the country since independence – a development that became known as the "Post-Election Violence" (PEV). However, after...

Constitutions and economic policy - the theoretical nexus -- Post-socialist constitutions in a nutshell -- Regression analyses of economic effects of post-socialist constitutions -- The synthetic control approach to estimating economic effects of post-socialist constitutions -- An evolutionary...

Taking into consideration the way in which the state powers work and interfere in Romania nowadays, we asked themselves whether the state of law is jeopardized. In order to provide an answer to this matter, the aim of our scientific approach is to analyse several problems that our young Romanian...

Most of the time, crises precede constitutions. Following a brief review of relevant historical background, this article aims to show why Iceland, after its financial collapse in 2008, is now at last on the road to adopting a new constitution to replace the provisional constitution from 1944....

This paper studies the factors driving changes in judicial independence (JI) as incorporated in constitutions. Two indicators of constitutionally safeguarded JI are constructed. Variations in these indicators are identified based on changes in the constitutions of as many as 100 countries that...

This paper studies the factors driving changes in judicial independence (JI) as incorporated in constitutions. Two indicators of constitutionally safeguarded JI are constructed. Variations in these indicators are identified based on changes in the constitutions of as many as 100 countries that...

Ethnically diverse societies have long faced the challenge of accommodating distinct and often conflictive normative orders within a single polity. Leaving the ideal of a single, homogeneous legal order aside, many Latin American states have recently acknowledged the right of indigenous peoples...

We study changes in the form of government as an example of endogenously determined constitutions. For a sample of 202 countries over the period 1950-2006, we find that most changes are relatively small and roughly equally likely to be either in the direction of more parliamentarian or more...

De jure judicial independence (JI) is the single most important predictor of de facto JI. In this paper, we describe under what conditions countries are likely to include JI in their constitutions. We describe and analyze both their original choice in this regard as well as change over time...

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead societies to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from...

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead countries to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from...

In Bolivien sind die Rechte für die vermehrte Beteiligung der Bevölkerung an politischen Entscheidungen mit der verstärkten Anerkennung von indigenen politischen Systemen verbunden. Die neue Verfassung, ein Paradebeispiel des "neuen Anden-Konstitutionalismus", definiert Bolivien als...

The paper confronts different aspects of decentralization: fiscal decentralization, postconstitutional regulatory decentralization, and constitutional decentralization – using a single dataset from Russian Federation of the Yeltsin period as a politically asymmetric country and a variety of...

Kann das Grundgesetz noch einen zeitgemäe︢n ethischen Auftrag in einer "ökonomiegetriebenen" Gesellschaft wahrnehmen, die unvereinbar ist mit Nachhaltigkeit und Humanität? Der Autor (Soziologe und Ökonom, engagiert in der Berliner Initiative "Regionaler Aufbruch") zeigt, wo...