Search

Normatively, democratic constitutions should express how citizens want to govern themselves collectively. Little is known, however, about how citizens' constitutional preferences can be elicited and aggregated in practice. An intuitively appealing approach is to allow various forms of popular participation during a constitution-making process, including a popular vote to accept or reject the draft constitution (Fishkin 2011). Based on the Chilean experience with democratic constitution making, this article identifies unanticipated and previously unexplored distortions that can lead to incongruence between the preferences of voters and representatives regarding the extent and direction of constitutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some democratically elected presidents more likely than others to extend or remove their current term limits? This paper argues that the frequency and type of reforms relaxing executive term limits depend on the relative partisan power of presidents and on inherited institutional constraints. These reforms are more likely when short-term shifts in the distribution of partisan resources significantly favour an incumbent executive vis-à-vis the opposition. Yet partisan imbalances do not fully account for the observed variation in outcomes across presidential democracies. Long-standing institutional legacies also affect whether presidents are willing and able to ease existing term limits. Specifically, the maintenance of effective executive constraints over time reduces the probability that incumbents facing restrictions on consecutive re-election will obtain a one-term extension and makes it extremely unlikely that they will abolish term limits altogether. A statistical analysis of reforms allowing consecutive executive re-election in Latin America between 1978 and 2015 and a comparison between Ecuador and Colombia support these arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strong tradition in democratic theory claims that only constitutions made with direct popular involvement can establish or deepen democracy. Against this view, we argue that new constitutions are likely to enhance liberal democracy when they emerge through a plural agreement among political elites with distinct bases of social support. Power dispersion during constitution writing induces the adoption of institutions that protect opposition forces from the arbitrary use of executive power without unduly impairing majority rule. However, since incumbents may renege on the bargain, the democratizing effect of politically plural constitutional agreements is likely to be larger in the short term, when the identity of negotiating political forces and the balance of power between them tend to remain stable. We find support for these arguments using an original global dataset on the origins of constitutions between 1900 and 2015 and a difference-in-differences design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constituent conventions have traditionally occupied a privileged position within normative theories of constitution-making. It is claimed that compared to a constituent legislature, an assembly specially commissioned to write a constitution is better able to reflect citizens' preferences and promote an impartial constitutional design. This article argues that the superiority of conventions over any type of constituent legislature has no support on either theoretical or empirical grounds. It also proposes that conventions may incur significant risks when a constitution is replaced within a democratic regime. Conventions often transgress their mandate by asserting their right to express or submit their decisions to the legally unbound power of the people. This claim to incarnate or represent the sovereign popular will increases the likelihood of conflicts between the convention and established institutions and, most crucially for the preservation of democracy, facilitates the use of this body by a dominant political group to legitimize its capture of state power. These arguments are supported with a critical analysis of the alleged virtues of conventions, a discussion of the history and theory of these bodies in the USA, and a comparative study of recent cases of constitutional replacement by conventions in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]