Constitution-making by elected assemblies in Southern Europe during the nineteenth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to examine whether the specific method of constitution-making in Southern Europe during the nineteenth century, and in particular the entanglement of an elected assembly with it, played any role in its outcome. The conclusion, based on a country-by-country report, is that the methods of constitution-making oscillated between royal concession, co-operation between the monarch and an elected assembly, and enactment of a fundamental law by an assembly alone. The participation of an elected assembly would frequently result in a document somewhat more liberal and more democratic than in the case of fundamental laws conceded by the monarch. However, the differences were not huge. Constitutions made by an assembly seem furthermore to have fared on average somewhat better than conceded constitutions, as far as their endurance is concerned. Concession and contract were however gradually falling into disuse as methods of constitution-making, ceding their place to (constituent) assemblies on a Pan-European scale. Since consent is obviously inscribed in the genome of constitutionalism as the fundamental organizational principle of society, it is to be expected that the symbolic foundation of a political community will be laid through the institutionalized consent of the members of this community.