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Dissertation

DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION-MAKING IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

A growing empirical literature shows that contested and participatory processes (democratic processes following Dahl’s democratic theory) of constitutional change are associated with desired political outcomes, such as reductions in post-conflict violence and increases in democracy once the new constitution comes into effect. However, despite these desired outcomes, we still do not know the factors that make democratic constitution-making processes more likely to emerge.

This dissertation presents and tests a theory that explains the democratic nature of constitution-making. Specifically, I theorize that the configuration of the relevant political actors that initiate the process of constitutional reform and the conflict settings in which this decision takes place are the main determinants of the democratic characteristics of these processes. 

I test this theory using a mixed methods approach. First, I create an original dataset with the characteristics of all constitution-making processes worldwide since 1945 and provide new measures of participation and contestation for all of them. I use these measures to quantitatively test the proposed theory and qualitatively compare four illustrative cases to illustrate the main dynamics identified with the quantitative results. I also discuss and present empirical evidence on the trade-off between contestation and participation in constitution-making when authoritarian leaders maximize a controlled form of citizen participation to legitimate a process that minimizes the opposition’s ability to influence the constitutional text. Finally, I analyze the recent sequence of failed constitutional reforms in Chile using process tracing to understand the causal sequence of events that link a conflict scenario with the democratic nature of constitution-making.

Refereed Publications

Working Papers

  • Institutional Foundations of Democratic Backsliding in Latin America (with M. Aguirre, D. Kapiszewski and D. Yanovich)
  • Democracy in Constitution-Making: A Global Dataset (1945-2023)
  • Failed Constitution-making in Comparative Perspective
  • SIGLA: A New Database of Political and Legal Institutions in Latin America (with A. Celis, J. Gelvez, D. Kapiszewski, H. Kurowski, A. Sanchez, R. Swain and H. Xuan)

Pre-doctoral