The early twenty-first century appears of be a period of turmoil in many seemingly stable constitutional democracies. This panel and two others discuss such questions as these: Are there general forces weakening constitutional democracy around the world, or are there nation-specific reasons for crises that simply happen to be occurring at roughly the same time?...
“Constitution-Making and Authoritarianism in Venezuela: The First Time as Tragedy, the Second as Farce
Marx‘s famous phrase holds that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.“ The phrase seems apt for the two Constituent Assemblies in Venezuela over the past twenty years: Hugo Chavez‘s in 1999 and Nicolas Maduro‘s in 2017. While constitution-making moments are sometimes romanticized as the high point of democratic constitutionalism,...
“Populism versus Democratic Governance“
This paper shifts the focus to the engagement between populism and democratic governance as an institutional account of how democracies function. Post-2008 anti-elitism as a social commitment translated to a robust anti-institutionalism in terms of state authority. The aim is not so much to provide definitions of either populism or democracy as to call attention...
“The Decline of Political Parties and Constitutional Democracy“
This paper highlights how the decline of political parties has contributed to the decline of constitutional democracy across the globe.
“Will Democracy Die in Darkness? Calling Autocracy by its Name“
The asserted primacy of norms over rules and institutions raises perhaps the greatest challenge for scholars and practitioners of constitutional design. In the midst of the great crisis facing contemporary democracy, in America and globally, is there nothing that the law can do? In this paper, I suggest that with appropriate constitutional anchors, the courts...