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Introduction

This concluding chapter explores waves, diffusion, and models of constitution­making in Asia. It situates Asia within the comparative constitution-making scholarship and experience.

Scholars ask whether there are distinctive regional models of constitution-making.[1595] Particularly, scholars consider whether there are distinctive Asian models of constitution-making. Menaka Guruswamy iden­tifies common features of three stories of constitution-making in South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Nepal): British heritage, constituent legislatures, and the role of dominant parties.[1596] Melissa Crouch explores how public participation in constitution-making in Southeast Asia was affected by different contexts, includ­ing UN administration (East Timor and Cambodia), military rule (Thailand and Myanmar), socialist rule (Vietnam and Laos), dominant party rule (Singapore and Malaysia), and democratic transition (Philippines and Indonesia).[1597] Wen-Chen Chang theorises about three models of constitution-making in East Asia, including constitution as promoting democracy (Japan), constitution-making as national independence (South Korea), and constitution-making as national inclusion (Taiwan).[1598] She concludes that ‘like constitution-making elsewhere, they [East Asian models of constitution-making] have particularities as well as common features, and have been developed and re-developed into distinctive, yet comparable, models of constitution-making’.[1599]

This conclusion is premised on the idea of contextualising global constitution­making, which means constitution-making is driven by an intricate interplay between global sources and norms and local and national concerns.[1600] It argues that constitution-making in Asia must be situated within global constitution-making while taking into account contextual factors at the same time. Constitution­making in Asia is a part of the global wave of constitution-making triggered by global political-geographic events. However, waves of constitution-making in Asia are shaped by domestic factors in particular Asian polities, such as revolutions, regime change, economic difficulty, and ethnic conflicts. Constitution-making in Asia is influenced by transnational constitutional experiences through three models of diffusion: coercive animated by external formal and informal pressures on conformity; mimetic responding to uncertainty; and normative stemming from professionalisation. This chapter identifies six models of constitution-making in Asia: imperial, democratic, nationalist, socialist, military, and ethnic. These func­tional models of constitution-making can be found in other parts of the world and are embedded in the Asian context.

II.

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Source: Bui Ngoc Son, Malagodi Mara (eds.). Asian Comparative Constitutional Law, Volume 1: Constitution-Making. Hart Publishing,2023. — 495 p.. 2023
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