The Contemporary Crisis of Constitutional Democracy†

Abstract

The growth of constitutional democracy has been a remarkable feature of the last 30 years, but during the last decade it has suffered a dramatic decline. That decline is marked less by constitutional democracies being overthrown than by an increase in regimes that retain the formal institutional trappings while flouting the norms and values on which constitutional democracies are based. This process of constitutional degradation is the subject of two recent books that together present the most comprehensive evaluation available on the current state of constitutional democracy. In this review article, the findings and analysis presented in Graber, Levinson and Tushnet’s Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? and Ginsburg and Huq’s How to Save a Constitutional Democracy are examined and appraised. The article argues that solutions to the contemporary crisis cannot be found only by strengthening liberal institutions; to survive, constitutional democracy must also seek to reinvigorate its democratic aspirations.