Browsing the last 40 years of the European Journal of Political Research (don’t ask why!) I noticed this bit about political scientists, jurists, and constitution. \u00c2\u00a0I’ve tried to make the same point here before but Maurice Duverger (1980) does it far more elegantly than I have:<\/p>\n
It is not usual for political scientists to construct analytical models defined initially by constitutions. However, no-one would dream of \u00c2\u00a0watching a game of football or of bridge without taking into account\u00c2\u00a0the rules of the game. They constitute a fundamental aspect of the players\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 strategy and tactics, the framework of which they define. \u00c2\u00a0Jurists have obscured this deep nature of constitutions by considering\u00c2\u00a0them as sacred texts, capable of only one interpretation, which would\u00c2\u00a0be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153true\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, while the others were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153false\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. What I mean of course is that\u00c2\u00a0each commentator believes his interpretation – which differs from that\u00c2\u00a0of his colleagues ~ to be the only true one. In actual fact, the interpretation of a constitution cannot be separated from the interrelationship of political forces to which it is applied. If the interrelationship\u00c2\u00a0varies, the structure and functioning of the form of government established by the constitution vary at the same time.\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n One implication of Duverger’s claims that is relevant in the context of writing a new constitution is that the effects of institutions vary with the political forces that operate within it – but the institutions themselves, perhaps especially the electoral system, affect the `political forces’. \u00c2\u00a0As far as I can tell there has been very little consideration of these issues in the debate over the new constitution – including in the constitutional council – in large part because the authors of the proposals share the naive view that constitutions have one correct interpretation rather than setting the basic rules of the game that the political actors will try to manipulate to their advantage.<\/p>\n Duverger, Maurice (1980). “A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government”\u00c2\u00a0European Journal of Political Research<\/em> \u00c2\u00a08: 165-187.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Browsing the last 40 years of the European Journal of Political Research (don’t ask why!) I noticed this bit about political scientists, jurists, and constitution. \u00c2\u00a0I’ve tried to make the same point here before but Maurice Duverger (1980) does it far more elegantly than I have: It is not usual for political scientists to construct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitution"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.constitutionalassembly.politicaldata.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}