Category: Constitution-Making
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Event: A Parliamentarian’s Guide to the Unwritten Constitution
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Ming-Sung Kuo: The Constituent Power’s Two Faces
Constitution-making has been part of political life since the 18th century. Today it is no longer a royal exercise to be completed by a stroke of pen. It is touted as a foundational political act in a nation’s quest for a new political life. It is an enterprise that looks to a set of techniques for its success. As countries around the globe set out on…
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Max Taylor: The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill: Missed Opportunities
The newly introduced Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (“the Bill”) – like the Draft Fixed-term Parliaments Act (Repeal) Bill which preceded it – is a missed opportunity. It has failed to unify and define the scope and exercise of the powers of proroguing and dissolving Parliament, in one statute, which were in need of clarification post-Miller II. Now that…
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Lucien Carrier: The Problems with Institutional Reform in Fragmented Political Landscapes
Clearly, liberal democracy is at a crossroad. Many are dissatisfied with the state of political affairs in their national countries. The news is filled with stories of uprisings in Chile or Bolivia, riots in Hong Kong or Paris, or mass movements in Catalonia or England. People take up the streets for the cause they believe…
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Brian Christopher Jones: A single written UK constitution may only make things worse
Arguments for and against a single written (or ‘codified’) UK constitution often revolve around flexibility versus rigidity or transparency versus opacity. Recently, another common objection is that it would just be inconvenient, or impossible given the current levels of polarisation. These objections are reasonable and legitimate, but they are hardly the full extent of the…
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Panagiotis Doudonis:Greece is no longer Europe’s black sheep: coronavirus, Greek government’s response and the Constitution
What does it take to become a paradigmatic case of a constitutional state acting in reaction to a pandemic? A government listening to healthcare experts and a constitutional structure that has foreseen the need to cautiously provide for emergency action. Greece has frequently been in the news during the last decade. It was the epicentre…
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Harshan Kumarasingham: Eastminster: the Westminster model in British Asia
Cross-posted from the Constitution Unit blog. The ‘Westminster model’ outside the British Isles tends to be associated with the former British settler colonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In a new book the influence of British ideas on democracy and institutions across the Asian continent is examined. Here the book’s editor, Harshan Kumarasingham, discusses how…
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Stefan Theil: Constitutions as culture: Two insights from Peter Häberle’s “The rationale of constitutions from a cultural science viewpoint”
Constitutions are the cultural achievement of centuries of historical legal development, an expression of the cultural self-presentation of a people. For all their variety, constitutions seek to set the rules for a fundamental order in an objective, rational and principled manner. The general structure of the state, the inclusion and contours given to basic legal…
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Stefan Theil: Three insights from Peter Häberle’s “Preambles in the text and context of constitutions”
Preambles are a hallmark of constitutions, and questions regarding their inclusion and content are an important part of the drafting process: a clear majority of the 194 constitutions analysed by the Constitute Project opted in favour of more or less expansive preambles. In this country, an early draft of a Constitution for the UK by…
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ConstitutionUK: Crowdsourcing the UK Constitution
The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) at LSE is crowdsourcing a new written codified constitution for the UK. Using an innovative online platform, constitutionuk.com, the IPA is asking the British public for their ideas, comments, suggestions and votes on what should be included in a new constitution for the UK. This is the first time…