Constitutional Politics
This chapter presents the intriguing puzzle of French constitutional politics: a spectacular increase in judicialization of French politics in the context of a flexible constitution and a politicized Constitutional Council. The state of the art is reviewed first at the international level and then within France in terms of both theory-building and empirical understanding of amending constitutions, judicialization of politics, and politicization of constitutional review. The French case, thus, provides an important case for developing comparative theory on constitutional politics and will remain a promising area of inquiry for many years to come. The chapter points to three promising areas of inquiry: the relationships between the types of government control and constitutional amendments, the patterns of judicialization, and the legitimacy of the role of constitutional review.