proj-ccpCorrelations

which constitutional features, as captured by the CCP, are correlated with:

" The theoretical work of Walter Murphy is illustrative here. Murphy argued that constitutions should be placed along a continuum between those that are more or less authoritative and those he called shams, which are mostly ignored by political leaders, not worth the parchment they are written on. The difference between an authoritative constitution (like in the United States) and a sham (like that which governed the former Soviet Union) is significant and could account for differences in mortality rates. Should political leaders in polities constituted by sham [*87] documents scrap those constitutional texts in favor of different ones? Does it make sense for the tyrant to draft a new Constitution when the one he has does not really control his ambitions and impulses anyway? Thus to place all constitutions in the same data set and treat them all more or less equally does not account for these rather important variations.

The same is true if we apply Nathan Brown’s crucial work on nonconstitutionalism to THE ENDURANCE OF NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONS. In CONSTITUTIONS IN A NONCONSTITUTIONAL WORLD, Brown examines the constitutions of most Middle Eastern regimes and concludes that they are fundamentally different than the ones we take for granted in Europe and the Americas. He argues that these texts are nonconstitutionalist in that their principal function is to enhance the power of the state rather than limit or control that power. These fundamental laws, Brown insists, are not shams, they are authoritative in every sense of the word; and yet they differ in arguably the most critical way from the constitutionalist instruments of the West whose primary purpose is to constrain the authority of political leaders and their institutions. I can just imagine Brown, like Murphy, gently pointing out to the authors of ENDURANCE that these subtle distinctions matter. " -- [1] by Beau Breslin

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https://www.constituteproject.org/

http://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/

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International Journal of Constitutional Law

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"comparative constitutional law "

"comparative constitutional design"

"constitutional engineering"

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", an empiricalassessment of the actual contribution of federalism and proportional representation onmitigating strife in multi-ethnic polities, suggests that both "highly touted solutions toethnic divisions," have at best mixed effects..27 27. Zachary Elkins & John Sides, Can Institutions Build Unity in Multiethnic States? 101 Am. Pol. Sci.Rev. 693 (2007)." -- [2]

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Constitutional Designs of Eastern European Countries by Young C. Kim calls into question the hypothesis that Parliamentary systems are more stable than Presidential.

"According to a quantitative analysis of ninety-three developing countries, it is hard to say that any one type of constitutional designs has better performed for democratization than the other did"

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toread

"On the possibility of "computerized" constitutional design, see for example David Law, Constitutions,in The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (Peter Cane & Herbert M. Kritzer eds., Oxford U. Press2010)."

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