{"title":"Chile’s failed constitutional intent: Polarization, fragmentation, haste and delegitimization","authors":"Valeria Palanza, Patricia Sotomayor Valarezo","doi":"10.1017/s204538172300028x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s204538172300028x","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article suggests that the conditions under which the Chilean constitutional process of 2021–22 undertook its task held the seeds of its doom. Constitutional conventions are always tasked with reaching agreements on the controversial allocation of decision rights, and doing so is no simple feat. The Chilean process combined (1) very dispersed preferences regarding the problems the new constitution should solve and the institutions to best enable solutions, with (2) a brief timeframe to allow for agreements to emerge, aggravated by (3) a composition of the Convention that was dominated by independents lacking experience in legislative bargaining, and (4) a severe disenchantment of the population with parties and politics as the backdrop. Together, these hurdles proved impossible to overcome. Despite the notorious political achievements of the Committee we study here, the proposal that came out of Chile’s Constitutional Convention in 2021 was plagued by controversy and a negative perception of the Convention’s work, and was ultimately rejected by the people.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Parity constitutionalism","authors":"Rosalind Dixon, Marcela Prieto Rudolphy","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000230","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 2021, the Chilean Convention became the first constitution-making body with gender parity. However, the draft – which reflected many gender-related norms – was rejected by 61.89 per cent of voters in the exit plebiscite of 2022. In this article, we argue that although parity constitutionalism has promise and, in the Chilean case, was linked to gender-related outcomes in the constitutional text, parity’s promise may fail to materialize. We thus caution against a naïve view of parity constitutionalism as one of the key legacies of the 2020–22 Chilean constitution-making process.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135199261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A failed but useful constitution-making process: How Bachelet’s process contributed to constitution-making in Chile","authors":"José Francisco García","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000254","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article shows how failed constitutional proposals may contribute to future constitution-making processes by exploring the relationship between the recently failed Chilean constitution-making process (2019–22) and the previous unsuccessful one led by former President Michelle Bachelet (2015–17). Comparative constitutional scholars are yet to fully understand how constitutional failures of this kind can take place, and Bachelet’s process has not received the attention it should. This article fills that gap by showing how both processes were driven by shared principles initially set by Bachelet. It also shows how those principles may serve as a blueprint for future constitutional changes in Chile. Bachelet had campaigned on the basis that any constitutional replacement attempt should be participatory, institutional and democratic – all ideas that have remained popular in Chile’s political landscape. Those ideas have served the purpose of both reducing transaction costs among constitutional negotiators and securing large compromises in polarized political scenarios.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135537712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constitutions as moving targets","authors":"Sergio Verdugo","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000308","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Constitutions change in different ways, and some constitutions – such as the Chilean Constitution – change often. The significant changes to the Chilean Constitution have been frequent and fast, and they have accompanied the failed constitution-making processes of the previous years. Examples include crucial sub-constitutional statutes such as the electoral system regulation and same-sex marriage, political practices challenging the power of the president in the law-making process, constitutional rules such as term limits for legislators, judicial practices such as the enforcement of social rights and the amendment procedures of the Constitution itself. Despite the successful attempts at reforming the Constitution and the failed attempts at replacing it, Chileans are still trying to replace the constitutional document. However, the constitutional framework has become unstable, making it harder to agree on what exactly is wrong with it. This article seeks to open a conversation in the constitutional literature. It argues that constitutions can become moving targets and uses the Chilean case to show the need to theorize more about the moving target problem.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136155233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Balancing may be everywhere, but the proportionality test is not","authors":"Virgílio Afonso da Silva","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000187","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The relationship between balancing and proportionality has not always been clear. Because part of the literature falls short of adequately differentiating between the two tools, many people have become conditioned to see an instance of proportionality whenever the word ‘balancing’ is dropped. As a consequence, the ubiquity of balancing brought about the feeling that proportionality is equally ubiquitous. In this article, I show that the proportionality test is necessarily linked to judicial review and how this link is key to understanding why not every instance of balancing is part of the proportionality test and that proportionality cannot be as ubiquitous as many have claimed. This has not only analytical relevance, but also institutional consequences.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"252 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136312779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Passionate humility for global constitutionalism in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukrainian war","authors":"Xymena Kurowska","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000229","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This essay proposes the epistemic ethos of passionate humility for knowledge production about global constitutionalism in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By employing the conceptual strategy of elucidation, passionate humility can reveal a counter-intuitively counter-hegemonic use of the global constitutionalist triad of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s war. As an approach to knowledge production, passionate humility addresses epistemic ignorance by retrieving situated non-imperial knowledges while also confronting the ambivalent politics of such knowledges. It therefore hints at how we can both decentre and make use of resources associated with global constitutionalism, without valorizing western elitist discourses, reinscribing the inter-imperial mode of knowledge production or sanitizing vernacular knowledges. Passionate humility does so in three moves: it problematizes hegemonic epistemic frames (either west-centred or Russia-centred); it foregrounds complex social agency, which resists a fixed theoretical or ideological language; and it reveals the contextual deployment of the Occidentalist language of global constitutionalism in the Ukrainian public discourse as a practice of negotiated subjecthood. Such practice can be counter-hegemonic without being inherently progressive.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135154067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"It’s the procedures, stupid: The success and failures of Chile’s Constitutional Convention","authors":"Tom Ginsburg, Isabel Álvarez","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000242","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Chile’s experience with its Constitutional Convention from 2021 to 2022 sheds light on an important issue for comparative reflection: the role of procedures in constitution-making processes. The Constitutional Convention was bound by procedures that were both externally imposed and internally created. Our assessment is that, while some procedures improved representation and deliberation, the most important decision-making procedures were pernicious to the process. We argue that looking at procedures is fundamental when analysing constitutional processes, as the rules that bind rule-making processes can significantly impact not only their functioning, but also their outcomes.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135742060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Critique of digital constitutionalism: Deconstruction and reconstruction from a societal perspective","authors":"Angelo Jr Golia","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000126","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Digital constitutionalism is a strand of scholarship that focuses on the relationship between constitutional law and the socio-legal challenges posed by the digital revolution. However, such scholarship often builds uncritically on the tenets of liberal, state-centred constitutional theory, giving rise to contradictions between analytical starting points and normative aspirations. Against this background, with an approach inspired by societal constitutionalism, this article engages with digital constitutionalism as both an object and a means of critique. As an object, digital constitutionalism is assessed in the light of its contradictions. As a means, digital constitutionalism is used to assess the limits of traditional, liberal, state-centred constitutional theory. In other words, societal constitutionalism is the theoretical lens used to both deconstruct and reconstruct digital constitutionalism according to its normative aspirations. The article has three main goals: first, linking different discourses within digital constitutionalism, highlighting its critical potential; second, advancing some proposals based on such reflections; and third, bringing digital constitutionalism closer to the broader global constitutionalism discourse. After an overview of societal constitutionalism, the article focuses on digital constitutionalism’s definition and three functionally differentiated systems: politics, economy and law. For each of them, it highlights analytical and normative gains deriving from the societal constitutionalism-based approach as well as policy proposals to be developed further.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48429657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social rights scapegoating","authors":"Adam Chilton, Cristián Eyzaguirre, Mila Versteeg","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000278","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In Chile, many commentators, academics and political leaders have spent years arguing that the limited nature of the social rights in the national constitution is partially responsible for the country’s economic and social inequality. It is thus unsurprising that changing the scope of the country’s social rights was a major focus of the recently failed constitutional reform effort. However, we argue that the long-running claim that Chile’s social problems were due to the limited nature of social rights can be thought of as social rights scapegoating , by which we mean that commentators blamed outcomes on constitutional rights, even though there is little evidence that countries’ socio-economic outcomes are a product of their social rights.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135285815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction to special issue: Feminist manifestos and global constitutionalism","authors":"Ruth Houghton, Aoife O’Donoghue","doi":"10.1017/s2045381723000217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381723000217","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Feminists and women activists use manifestos to express their frustrations with legal and political systems, expose the harms suffered in their lived experiences under patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, and call for radical political, legal and social change. This special issue on feminist manifestos and global constitutionalism considers the role of feminist manifestos in global constitutionalism. It interrogates the role of feminist manifestos in bringing about legal and political reform, their role as historical texts and sources of global constitutionalization, and their limitations as tools that are potentially both exclusionary and de-political. In their article, Ruth Houghton and Aoife O’Donoghue outline a role for feminist manifestos within feminist approaches to constituent power. Sheri Labenski uncovers from the archives the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom manifesto from 1924 and the outline for a ‘New International Order’. Gina Heathcote and Lucia Kula centre Lusophone African feminist action in Luanda, Angola, to problematize an approach to feminist manifestos that reiterates dominant feminisms, and instead argue for active silence by those more dominant feminist voices. In her conclusion to the special issue, Emily Jones uses posthuman feminism to interrogate and critique the claim of universality in global constitutionalism. Across this special issue, key themes emerge: the potential of inclusion and exclusion, and the role of manifesto as a method in knowledge production.","PeriodicalId":37136,"journal":{"name":"Global Constitutionalism","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135285655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}