Title: Contrasting approaches to political engineering: Constitutionalization & democratization
Abstract: The attempt to democratize or, more often, to re-democratize over fifty countries in the past twenty-five years has promoted a new interest in 'political engineering,' i.e. in purposive efforts to design political institutions in such a way as to ensure the subsequent persistence — if not the flourishing — of democracy. Scholars in Western democracies from various disciplines who previously had dedicated their acumen exclusively to explaining why existing laws and practices were (and should remain) stable, suddenly found themselves in contexts that demanded change. Having taken their own institutions and, especially, the diverse origins and trajectories of these institutions for granted, it seems fair to say that most of these political scientists, lawyers, economists and sociologists were unprepared to meet the challenge. The theories they had elaborated and the paradigms they had settled into told them precious little in generic terms about how democracy, the rule of law, systems of representation, independent judiciaries, civilian control over the military, a supportive political culture, 'popular' or 'parliamentary' sovereignty, national identity, and so forth had come about. Regional specialists had literally made their living explaining why their respective 'turfs' were unique and could not be expected to follow the trajectory of early 'political developers' in North America and Western Europe — whether for reasons of cultural "mind-set" or "world systemic" economic dependence.
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 5
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