Routledge Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Change

Comparative constitutional change has recently emerged as a distinct field in the study of constitutional law. It is the study of the way constitutions change through formal and informal mechanisms, including amendment, replacement, total and partial revision, adaptation, interpretation, disuse and revolution. The shift of focus from constitution-making to constitutional change makes sense, since amendment power is the means used to refurbish constitutions in established democracies, enhance their adaptation capacity and boost their efficacy. Adversely, constitutional change is also the basic apparatus used to orchestrate constitutional backslide as the erosion of liberal democracies and democratic regression is increasingly affected through legal channels of constitutional change.

Routledge Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Change provides a comprehensive reference tool for all those working in the field and a thorough landscape of all theoretical and practical aspects of the topic. Coherence from this aspect does not suggest a common view, as the chapters address different topics, but reinforces the establishment of comparative constitutional change as a distinct field. The book brings together the most respected scholars working in the field, and presents a genuine contribution to comparative constitutional studies, comparative public law, political science and constitutional history.

1 Introduction. Comparative constitutional change: a new academic field

Xenophon Contiades and Alkmene Fotiadou

PART I The study of comparative constitutional change: theoretical and methodological aspects

2 Comparative methodology and constitutional change

Jaakko Husa

3 Order from chaos? Typologies and models of constitutional change

Oran Doyle

4 Constitutional endurance

Tom Ginsburg

5 Constitutional amendment versus constitutional replacement: an empirical comparison

David S. Law and Ryan Whalen

6 Varieties of liberal constitutionalism

Mark Tushnet

PART II Formal constitutional change

7 Formal amendment rules: functions and design

Richard Albert

8 Constitutional design through amendment

Manfred Stelzer

9 The uses and abuses of constitutional unamendability

Yaniv Roznai

10 Federalism and constitutional change

Nathalie Behnke and Arthur Benz

11 Participatory constitutional change: constitutional referendums

Eoin Carolan

PART III Informal constitutional change

12 Political practice and constitutional change

David Feldman

13 Judge-made constitutional change

Joel I. Colón-Ríos

14 Global values, international organizations and constitutional change

Helle Krunke

15 Crises, emergencies and constitutional change

Giacomo Delledonne

16 The material study of constitutional change

Marco Goldoni and Tarik Olcay

PART IV Contemporary challenges in the theory and practice of comparative constitutional change

17 Constituent power and European constitutionalism

Chris Thornhill

18 Populism and constitutional change

Paul Blokker

19 The democratic backsliding in the European Union and the challenge of constitutional design

Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz

20 Constitution and self-determination

Zoran Oklopcic

21 Gender in comparative constitutional change

Silvia Suteu

PART V Case studies: distinct profiles of constitutional change

22 The future of UK constitutional law

Robert Blackburn

23 Constitutional change in Australia: the paradox of the frozen continent

Elisa Arcioni and Adrienne Stone

24 Preservationist constitutional change in Latin America: the cases of Chile and Brazil

Juliano Zaiden Benvindo

25 Informal constitutional change in unlikely places: the case of South Africa

James Fowkes

26 Constitutional changes in Japan

Yasuo Hasebe

Xenophon Contiades isProfessor of Public Law, Panteion University and President of the Centre for European Constitutional Law, Athens, Greece.

Alkmene Fotiadou is aResearch Fellow at the Centre for European Constitutional Law, Athens, Greece.