Full Description
Is the world facing a serious threat to the protection of constitutional democracy?
There is a genuine debate about the meaning of the various political events that have, for many scholars and observers, generated a feeling of deep foreboding about our collective futures all over the world. Do these events represent simply the normal ebb and flow of political possibilities, or do they instead portend a more permanent move away from constitutional democracy that had been thought triumphant after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989?
Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? addresses these questions head-on: Are the forces weakening constitutional democracy around the world general or nation-specific? Why have some major democracies seemingly not experienced these problems? How can we as scholars and citizens think clearly about the ideas of "constitutional crisis" or "constitutional degeneration"? What are the impacts of forces such as globalization, immigration, income inequality, populism, nationalism, religious sectarianism?
Bringing together leading scholars to engage critically with the crises facing constitutional democracies in the 21st century, these essays diagnose the causes of the present afflictions in regimes, regions, and across the globe, believing at this stage that diagnosis is of central importance - as Abraham Lincoln said in his "House Divided" speech, "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."
Contents
1.: Mark A.Graber, Sanford Levinson, and Mark Tushnet: Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? Introduction
Part I: Background
2.: Jack M. Balkin: Constitutional Crisis and Constitutional Rot
3.: Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq: Defining and Tracking the Trajectory of Liberal Constitutional Democracy
4.: Zachary Elkins: Is the Sky Falling? Constitutional Crises in Historical Perspective
5.: Ellen Kennedy: Constitutional Failure Revisited
Part II: Countries and Regions
6.: Jennifer Hochschild: What's New? What's Next? Threats to the American Constitutional Order
7.: Eric A. Posner: The Trump Presidency: A Constitutional Crisis in the United States?
8.: Richard Albert and Michael Pal: The Democratic Resilience of the Canadian Constitution
9.: Ana Micaela Alterio and Roberto Niembro: Constitutional Culture and Democracy in Mexico: A Critical View of the 100-Year-Old Mexican Constitution
10.: David E. Landau: Constitution-Making and Authoritarianism in Venezuela: The First Time as Tragedy, the Second as Farce
11.: Roberto Gargarella: Latin America: Constitutions in Trouble
12.: Erin F. Delaney: Brexit Optimism and British Constitutional Renewal
13.: Nicolas Roussellier: France and the Fifth Republic: Constitutional Crisis or Political Malaise?
14.: Victor Ferreres Comella: Constitutional Crisis in Spain: The Catalan Secessionist Challenge
15.: Gábor Halmai: A Coup Against Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Hungary
16.: Wojciech Sadurski: Constitutional Crisis in Poland
17.: Michaela Hailbronner: Beyond Legitimacy: Europe's Crisis of Constitutional Democracy
18.: Heinz Klug: State Capture or Institutional Resilience: Is there a Crisis of Constitutional Democracy in South Africa
19.: James Thuo Gathii: Three Types of Constitutional Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa
20.: Ozan O. Varol: Stealth Authoritarianism in Turkey
21.: Yaniv Roznai: Israel: A Crisis of Liberal Democracy?
22.: Manoj Mate: Constitutional Erosion and the Challenge to Secular Democracy in India
23.: Rosalind Dixon and Anika Gauja: Australia's Non-Populist Democracy? The Role of Structure and Policy
24.: David S. Law and Chien-Chih Lin: Constitutional Inertia in Asia
Part III: Factors
25.: Samuel Issacharoff: Populism versus Democratic Governance
26.: Desmond King and Rogers M. Smith: Populism, Racism, and the Rule of Law in Constitutional Democracies Today
27.: Alexander Aleinikoff: Inherent Instability: Immigration and Constitutional Democracies
28.: Kim Lane Scheppele: The Party's Over
29,: Ran Hirschl and Ayelet Shachar: 'Religious Talk' in Narratives of Membership
30.: Ganesh Sitaraman: Economic Inequality and Constitutional Democracy
31.: David Schneiderman: Disabling Constitutional Capacity: Global Economic Law and Democratic Decline
32.: Sujit Choudhry: Will Democracy Die in Darkness? Calling Autocracy by its Name
33.: Oren Gross: The Normal Exception
34.: Robert V. Percival: The Climate Crisis and Constitutional Democracies
Part IV: Observations
35.: J.H.H. Weiler: The Crumbling of European Democracy
36.: Mark Tushnet: Comparing Right-Wing and Left-Wing Populism
37.: Sanford Levinson: The Continuing Specter of Popular Sovereignty and National Self-Determination in an Age of Political Uncertainty
38.: Mark A. Graber: What's in Crisis? The Postwar Constitutional Paradigm, Tranformative Constitutionalism, and the Fate of Constitutional Democracy
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Index
