Eternity Faces ‘the People’

This chapter looks at a trend that seemingly contradicts the global rise of eternity clauses: popular participation in constitution-making processes. It discusses whether the deeper democratic embeddedness of constitutions as pursued through participatory processes can help address democratic anxiety about eternity clauses. It maps several processes of constitution-making that can be characterized as participatory, with a view to determining whether unamendability was incorporated into the final constitutional drafts, how it was debated, and why alternative design choices have been adopted. This chapter seeks to test empirically those theoretical arguments about eternity clauses that view them as repositories of constituent intent. It also explores eternity clauses as the high point of the battle between rigidity and openness in constitutional design.