Western Experiences in Constitutionalism
It is commonly asserted that Western constitutionalism as an intellectual discourse maintains important continuities with an old and rich tradition of thought all the way back to Athens.
Billias, for instance, points out that American and European constitutionalism of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries drew inspiration from the same resources of western civilization and thought. This legacy is said to have comprised “religious ideas stemming from the Judeo-Christian tradition, ideas derived from the constitutions of classical antiquity in Greece and Rome, constitutional theories developed by thinkers in the medieval period, and ideas revived in the Renaissance by writers like Machiavelli” (Billias 1990: 14).One may wonder about the so-called ‘Judeo-Christian tradition” when the exclusion and persecution of Jews was one of the shared features of Western constitutionalism until well into the twentieth century in some cases. It is also possible to question the distinctiveness of the purported constitutions of ancient Greece and Rome in contrast to their contemporaries in Persia and India, or how they somehow managed to reach Enlightenment Europe unadulterated by influences or experiences of the Islamic civilization which transmitted earlier legacies to medieval Europe. Moreover, such presumed continuities do not account for the social and economic conditions that probably provided a stronger impetus for the actual historical context in which modern Western constitutionalism first emerged and evolved. In any case, neither type of genesis precludes consideration of a different set of factors or characteristics as the basis of the emergence and development of the concept in other parts of the world.
It is also relevant to note for our purposes here that the contractual nature of European medieval law, with its origins in negotiated settlements between conflicting social classes, was an important factor in contributing to constitutionalism in that context.
The idea of the law as an autonomous authority exclusive of control of royal power—a critical aspect of constitutionalism—was gradually consolidated during this period. Medieval European constitutionalism was by no means well-defined or consistent, but that idea did achieve sufficient legitimacy for a nascent system of rights and law, which was able to represent and negotiate the interests of different social groups. But it does not necessarily follow that the development of European constitutionalism was uniform, consistent or irreversible. There were always divergent experiences, as well as shifts back and forth, from positive development of constitutionalism to regression into autocratic rule, as happened in Spain, Germany, and Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. While examining the small sample of three leading Western experiences, each on its own terms, can yield some general features of the concept, the following review will also show the incremental and contingent nature of the process even in those so-called countries of origin.
More on the topic Western Experiences in Constitutionalism:
- Western Experiences in Constitutionalism
- Dialectic of Universality and Relativity of Constitutionalism
- Process/Practice-Based Approach to Constitutionalism
- The Impact of the Western Tradition
- Comparing Western and Eastern Europe Traditions
- An-Na'im Abdullahi Ahmed. African Constitutionalism and the Role of Islam. University of Pennsylvania Press,2006. — 216 p., 2006
- Democracy and Constitutionalism
- Introduction
- Toward an Inclusive Theory of Constitutionalism
- Paradoxes and History of the Concept of the European Constitutional Heritage