Constitutional design for dynamic democracies: A framework for analysis

Abstract

Abstract Over time, a constitution may become suboptimal for the political system that it is meant to support and yet remain in place, largely unchanged. Thus, we might ask how a constitution might be designed to remain ideal for a democracy as it evolves, and indeed whether this is even possible. This practical dilemma has not been rigorously analyzed in the literature on constitutional design, however, because this research agenda has tended to downplay the potential for democracies to transform over time. To remedy this gap, this article sketches an explicitly temporal approach to design, which takes account of a wide range of political system dynamics. The framework contributes insights into the various ways that constitutional structures can be designed to operate over time; the alignment between these setups and different political system dynamics; and the means by which a constitutional design process might be reconfigured to give more weight to the prospect of fundamental political change.