Since 1997, the UK constitution has undergone a transformation. This has since become a rolling process which shows little sign of abating. However, some of this constitutional change has been criticised for being rushed, piecemeal and with little consideration of the broader constitution. Yet, despite these criticisms, the underlying methodology of constitutional change has not been discussed in any great detail. This thesis, focusing on formal constitutional change, argues that the methodology to deliver that change should be enhanced to address these concerns. After establishing the limits of formal constitutional change, this thesis then considers how constitutional issues are approached within government and suggests that a Department of Legal Affairs would improve the preparation of proposed changes before being presented to Parliament. The politics of constitutional change are then analysed, with a particular focus on the process of coalition negotiations, which has become a new part of the methodology. The parliamentary process is considered by analysing the parliamentary passage of what became the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. Recent changes to parliamentary procedure have allowed Parliament to scrutinise constitutional legislation more effectively, although there are still areas for significant improvement, particularly during the Committee Stage in the House of Commons. The thesis then considers the role of referendums and establishes when a referendum is required either as a matter of law or convention. The thesis then shows how procedural innovations such as the constitutional conventions in Australia and Ireland or the citizens’ assemblies in British Columbia and Ontario could be used in the UK. Also, as any recommendations of a constitutional convention or a citizens’ assembly are usually put to the rest of the electorate at a referendum, the links between a convention or assembly and the referendum process are discussed. Taken together, these enhancements to discrete aspects of the methodology of constitutional change should ensure that changes are more considered and allow for a more a stable constitutional settlement.

The Russian and Ukrainian constitutions—like those in many other post-Soviet states—have concentrated political power in exclusive “super” presidencies. However, the concentration of power has persisted in only one of the two cases. Russian presidential authority was resilient in the face of attempts to increase legislative strength in the 1990s, even when severe economic and political crises undermined the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. In contrast, Ukrainian presidential power fluctuated over time, with “Orange Revolution” constitutional reforms shifting power to the parliament in 2004 and their annulment returning power to the president in 2010. What explains the different trajectories of Russia’s and Ukraine’s presidential systems? Using process-tracing to parse out the actions of elites during the 1990s and 2000s in combination with analyses of the electoral foundations of elite competition in the two cases, this dissertation develops an argument about the origins of super-presidential systems and the prospects for constitutional change in such systems. Concentrated executive power in Russia and Ukraine: (1) depended on elites’ preferences for more or less concentrated political authority; (2) these preferences depended on how elites perceived their political prospects for capturing and holding presidential power; (3) elites’ perceptions of their prospects for gaining and holding presidential power were conditioned by the relative balance of power between major political forces; and (4) this balance of power was very vulnerable to pressure from social forces. It was this final factor that distinguished the Ukrainian and Russian cases. Ukraine had more balanced political competition because of its coherent ethno-linguistic cleavage, and consequently more uncertainty about rival elites’ political fortunes, which produced challenges to super-presidentialism. Russia’s experience with regional politics, by contrast, has not produced a similarly stable balance of power between rival forces, because the country’s minority groups were too diverse and dispersed to form a unified constituency that could challenge the political dominance of the center. The structural underpinnings of elite competition help to explain why the preferences of self-interested politicians to concentrate or disperse political power changed over time in ways that promoted unstable super-presidentialism in Ukraine compared to much more durable super-presidentialism in Russia. / text

Soll Verfassung nicht nur in alt-konstitutionalistischer Manier Politik und Staat einhegen und begrenzen, sondern Letzteren auch Ziele und Orientierung verleihen, im Idealfall sogar gesellschaftliche Rahmenbedingungen adäquat verarbeiten, dann kann sie nicht als bloß statisches Normengefüge begriffen und interpretiert werden. Vielmehr müssen unter von der Verfassung selbst gesetzten Bedingungen Änderungen möglich sein. In diesem dialektischen Spannungsverhältnis, in dem Wandel eine spezifische verfassungsrechtlich begründete Ordnung voraussetzt und Verfassung dauerhaft nur Akzeptanz finden kann, wenn sie Wandel verfassungskonform verarbeitet, bewegt sich die Verfassungspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Der vorliegende Aufsatz geht der Frage nach, inwieweit dieses Wechselverhältnis von Politik und Recht die Entwicklung des Grundgesetzes geprägt hat. Welche auf Ordnung angelegte Normen wurden verändert? Lassen sich Trends des gestalterischen Wandels der Verfassung erkennen? Um diese Fragen beantworten zu können, skizziert der Beitrag zunächst die zentralen Ordnungsprinzipien des Grundgesetzes, wie sie 1948/49 gefasst wurden. Im zweiten und dritten Teil schildert er die Charakteristika der Verfassungsänderungen, die entweder durch Gesetz oder infolge Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts stattfanden. Abschließend resümiert der Aufsatz die Reichweite des Verfassungswandels, diskutiert dessen Legitimation und die Fähigkeit des Grundgesetzes, politisches Handeln zu ordnen.

There is a large and diverse body of empirical research on constitutional change and "new constitutionalism" in contemporary societies, yet a general theory of constitutional change is still lacking. Researchers interested in democratic constitutionalism are confronted with various competing assumptions and explanations regarding particular, often unrelated, cases. In order to facilitate cross-referencing and conceptual consistency in the study of new constitutionalism in Latin America, this chapter provides an overview of the main theoretical perspectives on constitutional change beyond the specific regional context of Latin America, classifies the existing studies on constitutional change, and discusses their individual advantages and shortcomings.

The Canada Round was a period of megaconstitutional politics where many of the perennial topics of Canadian politics were viewed through a constitutional lens. This research analyzes the Canada Round of negotiations for its potential to act as a project in historical justice to address the state’s mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. By viewing constitutional change as a means of engaging in political redress, this research offers a corrective to understanding the dynamics of the Canada Round and provides an expanded understanding of redress to compensate for its limited and non-transformative nature in settler-colonial contexts by introducing the idea of redress constitutionalism. Through an analysis of the primary documents from the Canada Round, this research demonstrates that national Indigenous organizations—the Assembly of First Nations, the Métis National Council, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, and the Native Council of Canada—sought to employ constitutional change for its reparative potential to address long-standing injustices against Indigenous peoples in Canada caused or worsened by the constitution. Therefore, the failure to significantly renew the constitution was also a failure to significantly engage in redress, remedy their historical exclusion from decision making, and respond to the suppression of their self-determination. / Graduate

Esta dissertação objetiva situar o tema das mutações constitucionais no contexto da dinâmica do sistema jurídico e demonstrar a interdependência entre força normativa da Constituição e mudança constitucional, abordando as divergências terminológicas existentes, a relação dialética entre reforma e mutação constitucional e os limites desta última. Pretende- se, também, alertar para a necessidade de considerar questões de capacidade institucional e efeitos dinâmicos no contexto de uma Constituição viva, na qual a mudança decorre da participação de todos os Poderes, assim como da sociedade. No tocante ao Poder Judiciário, com apoio no constitucionalismo democrático e nas implicações constitucionais do backlash (reação social contrária às decisões judiciais), demonstra-se que a mutação via judicial pode contribuir para a legitimidade democrática da Constituição. Resgatam-se, ainda, os papéis que os Poderes Executivo e Legislativo podem desempenhar no rumo das mutações constitucionais, especialmente através da aprovação e nomeação de Ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal e de emendas constitucionais, leis e outros atos legislativos, de maneira que as mutações resultem de um contínuo diálogo constitucional. Para testar a aplicação dessas teorias ao direito brasileiro, traça-se um panorama de diversas mutações constitucionais no Brasil e examinam-se, detalhadamente, dois casos: no primeiro, negando-se a mutação da norma que faculta ao Senado suspender a execução de lei declarada inconstitucional pelo STF e, no segundo, reconhecendo, mediante análise histórica e sociológica, a mutação do princípio da igualdade que está na base das discussões sobre as ações afirmativas raciais. / This essay intends to place the theme of constitutional change in the context of judicial system dynamics and to show the interdependence between Constitution normative strength and constitutional change, approaching the existing terminological divergencies, the dialetic relation between formal and informal constitutional change and the limits of the last one. It is also intended to warn about the need to take into consideration matters of institutional capacity and dynamic effects in the context of a living Constitution, in which the change derives from the participation of all the Powers and from the society as well. Concerning the Judicial Power, with support on democratic constitutionalism and constitutional implications of backlash (contrary social reaction to judicial decisions), it is demonstrated that constitutional change through judicial means may promote Constitution democratic legitimacy. It is likewise rescued the roles that the Executive and Legislative Powers may play in the course of constitutional changes, specially through the approval and nomination of the Federal Supreme Court Ministers and via constitutional amendments, laws and other legislative acts, so that the changes arise from an ongoing constitutional dialogue. To test the application of these theories into Brazilian law, it is drawn a landscape of several constitutional informal changes in Brazil and examined, in detail, two cases: in the first one, by denying the change of the norm that allows the Senate to cease the execution of a law declared inconstitutional by the Supreme Court and, in the second, by recognizing, according to historical and sociological analysis, the informal change of the principle of equality which is in the bottom of the debates over the racial affirmative actions.

Esta dissertação objetiva situar o tema das mutações constitucionais no contexto da dinâmica do sistema jurídico e demonstrar a interdependência entre força normativa da Constituição e mudança constitucional, abordando as divergências terminológicas existentes, a relação dialética entre reforma e mutação constitucional e os limites desta última. Pretende- se, também, alertar para a necessidade de considerar questões de capacidade institucional e efeitos dinâmicos no contexto de uma Constituição viva, na qual a mudança decorre da participação de todos os Poderes, assim como da sociedade. No tocante ao Poder Judiciário, com apoio no constitucionalismo democrático e nas implicações constitucionais do backlash (reação social contrária às decisões judiciais), demonstra-se que a mutação via judicial pode contribuir para a legitimidade democrática da Constituição. Resgatam-se, ainda, os papéis que os Poderes Executivo e Legislativo podem desempenhar no rumo das mutações constitucionais, especialmente através da aprovação e nomeação de Ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal e de emendas constitucionais, leis e outros atos legislativos, de maneira que as mutações resultem de um contínuo diálogo constitucional. Para testar a aplicação dessas teorias ao direito brasileiro, traça-se um panorama de diversas mutações constitucionais no Brasil e examinam-se, detalhadamente, dois casos: no primeiro, negando-se a mutação da norma que faculta ao Senado suspender a execução de lei declarada inconstitucional pelo STF e, no segundo, reconhecendo, mediante análise histórica e sociológica, a mutação do princípio da igualdade que está na base das discussões sobre as ações afirmativas raciais. / This essay intends to place the theme of constitutional change in the context of judicial system dynamics and to show the interdependence between Constitution normative strength and constitutional change, approaching the existing terminological divergencies, the dialetic relation between formal and informal constitutional change and the limits of the last one. It is also intended to warn about the need to take into consideration matters of institutional capacity and dynamic effects in the context of a living Constitution, in which the change derives from the participation of all the Powers and from the society as well. Concerning the Judicial Power, with support on democratic constitutionalism and constitutional implications of backlash (contrary social reaction to judicial decisions), it is demonstrated that constitutional change through judicial means may promote Constitution democratic legitimacy. It is likewise rescued the roles that the Executive and Legislative Powers may play in the course of constitutional changes, specially through the approval and nomination of the Federal Supreme Court Ministers and via constitutional amendments, laws and other legislative acts, so that the changes arise from an ongoing constitutional dialogue. To test the application of these theories into Brazilian law, it is drawn a landscape of several constitutional informal changes in Brazil and examined, in detail, two cases: in the first one, by denying the change of the norm that allows the Senate to cease the execution of a law declared inconstitutional by the Supreme Court and, in the second, by recognizing, according to historical and sociological analysis, the informal change of the principle of equality which is in the bottom of the debates over the racial affirmative actions.

This thesis is arguing that Sweden needs to change the legislation for how the constitution can be changed, to maintain democracy and strengthen the constitutionalism in the country. The argument is based on the fact that the Swedish constitution is easy to change, and the time frame for a change is short if there is a political majority in the parliament. Constitutionalism is often connected with the rule of law, division of powers and constitutional courts, but is in this thesis mainly used as an idea of a restriction of the political majority to prevent misuse of the political power, but also as a tool to maintain democracy. The tension between democracy and constitutionalism is also discussed throughout the thesis to conclude if constitutionalism could be used without interfering with sovereignty of the people. A comparative study is done with Hungary, and the political development in the country is used as an example of the effect of a strong political majority without any boundaries. The countries similarities and differences are presented in relation to democracy and different types of legislation regarding constitutional change. A discussion is held on how constitutionalism can be used as a tool to maintain individual rights and democracy, but also if there are any negative consequences with a strong constitutionalism. The thesis is focusing on the regulation of constitutional change, since it is discussed that the way of changing the constitution is the truly important one to maintain a democratic country. But other aspects of constitutionalism are discussed as well. At the end of the thesis there is a suggestion to change the legislation for constitutional change in Sweden. All the suggestions are supposed to extend the time frame before changes can be made and make it more difficult to change the constitution with a strong political majority.

Non prévue par les textes, l'actualisation de la Constitution ravive le plus souvent la crainte d'un gouvernement des juges. Il faut dire que selon une acceptation classiquement répandue, le Conseil constitutionnel excéderait le cadre général de sa mission à chaque fois qu'il s'écarterait de la signification originaire des énoncés constitutionnels. Il appartiendrait au Conseil constitutionnel d'examiner seulement un rapport de conformité au regard d'une norme constitutionnelle qui s'imposerait à lui. Cette approche de l'office du juge constitutionnel est réductrice, elle néglige les rapports entre le temps et la Constitution. L'étude comparée des expériences espagnole, italienne et française amène ainsi à repenser l'office du juge constitutionnel à l'aune de la variable temps. En cela, l'adaptation de la norme constitutionnelle à la réalité sociale, permise par la liberté d'interprétation du juge constitutionnel, contribue à la préservation de la longévité de la Constitution. La longévité requiert en effet en sus de la stabilité, soit de la continuité de la Constitution, la mutabilité de la substance constitutionnelle. Or, garantir la suprématie de la Constitution implique, dans une perspective d'intemporalité, de préserver sa longévité. L'actualisation de la Constitution constitue dès lors une fonction implicite du juge constitutionnel visant à garantir la longévité de la Constitution par le biais de l'interprétation de la Constitution. Une fonction que le juge constitutionnel s'efforce d'encadrer afin de respecter l'équilibre des pouvoirs inhérent à un État de droit. / Not planned by law, the updating of the Constitution often revives the fear of a government of the judges. In fact, according to a widespread acceptance: the Constitutional Council would exceed the general framework of its mission every time it deviates from the original meaning of constitutional statements. The sole duty of the Constitutional Council would be to examine a relationship of compliance with regard to a constitutional standard, which would be imperative upon him. This approach of the office of the constitutional judge is reducing and neglects relationships between time and the Constitution. The comparative study of Spanish, Italian and French experiences leads to rethink the office of the constitutional judge by considering it in light of the time variable. In that respect, adaptation of the constitutional standard to social reality, allowed by the freedom of interpretation of the constitutional judge, contributes to the Constitution's preservation and longevity. Indeed, longevity requires, in addition to stability, which ensures the Constitution's continuity, mutability of the constitutional substance. Now, ensuring the Constitution's supremacy implies, in a perspective of timelessness, to preserve its longevity. From then on, updating the Constitution is an implicit duty of the constitutional judge, aiming to en sure the Constitution's longevity through its interpretation. A duty that the constitutional judge endeavours to supervise strictly in order to respect the balance of powers inherent to a State subject to the rule of law.

O objetivo dessa dissertação de Mestrado é examinar os poderes institucionais de controle da agenda legislativa dos Presidentes nas Constituições latino-americanas e analisar a importância das mudanças constitucionais determinantes para cada prerrogativa legislativa dos presidentes. A pesquisa empírica buscou entender a influência dessas mudanças para o relacionamento entre os poderes e para o processo legislativo. Os dados dos poderes institucionais abrangem uma amostra de 17 países em seus períodos democráticos entre 1945 e 2003. O trabalho adota uma perspectiva diacrônica de análise dos textos constitucionais. A análise é informada pelas hipóteses da literatura institucional acerca dos problemas enfrentados pelo presidencialismo, mais especificamente do conflito que seria inerente à separação institucional dos poderes Executivo e Legislativo e a supremacia dos presidentes com fortes poderes institucionais no processo decisório. Tal perspectiva procura enfatizar a importância das mudanças ocorridas no presidencialismo em diferentes períodos, isto é, o caráter dinâmico da estrutura institucional do presidencialismo, verificável pela análise das reformas constitucionais e a relação do contexto dessas mudanças com os presidentes legislativamente dominantes no processo legislativo. / The objective of the Master´s dissertation is to examine the institutional details of agenda setting in Latin American Constitutions and analyse the changes in constitutional provisions. Moreover, the study tries to understand the influence of those changes for the executive-legislative relations and for the legislative process. The changes in constitutional rules is the focus to reassess the commom assumptions of Latin American presidential regimes. I have studied the agenda setting institutions in 17 Latin American presidential countries since 1945 in their democratic periods. The enphasis are the constitutional provisions wich give power to Presidents. I argued that constitutional powers in presidential regimes are changing along the period, because of that the consequences for Executive-Legislative relations should not be derived from a static analyse of constitutional provisions. Accounting for the effects of political institutions and other factors, my findings suggest that demands for constitutional amendments make the executive-legislative relations a dynamic process of political changes.