CONSTITUTIONALISM AND AMENDMENTS TO THE BASIC LAW OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 2020: POLITICAL ANALYSIS

The purpose of the article is to reveal the contradictions of the Russian transitional constitutionalism of the 2020 model as perceived by experts. It is achieved by presenting a palette of experts' views on the phenomenon of constitutionalism, expert assessments of the impact of the 2020 constitutional reform on constitutional principles, the distance between citizens and authorities, as well as expert opinions on the existence of value consolidation between the state and civil society in modern Russia. It is extremely important that the constitutional amendments, contributing to adaptation to changing realities, remain within the framework of the system of constitutionalism. There is no relevant developed methodology for political and legal assessment in the Russian-language scientific literature. The research group, having resorted to an expert survey, proposed their own version. The results obtained indicate not only the importance of value connotations in the perception of constitutionalism by experts, the weakening of all groups of constitutional principles (negative assessments prevail over positive ones), the manipulative nature of the process, but also a potential increase in the distance between the governors and the governed. Nevertheless, the threshold values that could indicate the interpretation of constitutional novels by experts as leading to going beyond the framework of constitutionalism are not identified. Since the project is pilot and generalizations are based on expert estimates, the conclusions are debatable.

The Dominion model of transitional constitutionalism

This symposium has explored New Dominion constitutionalism inductively and contextually, placing the phenomenon within a historically nested set of ideas and practices from the Old (Settler) Dominions, through the “Bridge Dominion” of Ireland, before giving detailed attention to the South Asian New Dominions of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The articles collectively form a basis from which to analyze the legal configuration of New Dominion status and its legacy by exploring links between New Dominion constitutional framing and post-independence design and practice. Building on the case studies, the principal contention of this summative contribution is that New Dominion constitutionalism should be understood as the first constitutional model of note designed to manage political transitions on a global scale. A product of the twilight of the British Empire, New Dominion constitutionalism represents a model for decolonizing nations and an important antecedent to later post-Cold War transitions. Both transitional and transnational, New Dominion status offered an interim frame of government for political transitions, the fuzzy center of which derived from Westminster-style conventions of political constitutionalism, as well as a template establishing the legal basis for constituting the fully independent state.

Russian Constitutional Development: Formal and Informal Practices

Transitional constitutionalism remains the subject of intensive political controversy. Based on a project made possible by the Institute of Law and Public Policy (Moscow) this article presents the analysis of the basic constitutional principles of pluralism, the separation of powers, federalism, the independence of the judiciary and the guarantee of political rights and freedoms. It describes the changing character of their implementation in different areas of constitutional practices – legislation, constitutional justice, administrative activities and informal practices, and the comparative level of constitutional deviations in each of them. The important new expertise of this research is the concept and methodology of the constitutional monitoring and recommendations for full-scale reforms in key areas of Russian constitutional and political settlement. The author shows that the true choice facing modern society is not between constitutionalism or its negation, which is a dilemma, but between real and sham constitutionalism, with a wide variety of intermediate options separating them. It is precisely this intermediate area which the author defines as a transitional type of constitutionalism, the field of collision between different political stakeholders. This is an area of unstable equilibrium where the implementation of different legal strategies and technologies may produce a definitive effect.

Negotiating Women in Egypt's Post-Mubarak Constitutions (2012–2014)

This paper presents a comparative “gender audit” of Egypt's two constitutions (2012, 2014) developed after a people's uprising in 2011 and 2013 led to the ousting of two presidents (Mubarak and Morsi respectively). Egypt's two constitutions are particularly compelling for the study of gender politics in transitional constitutionalism because while the number of women participating in the constitution writing process was very similar, the gendered outcomes were starkly different. While the political opportunity for mobilizing around women's rights was enhanced in the aftermath of Mubarak's demise, the capitalization of these opportunities by organized political forces with an anti-feminist agenda undermined the prospects of en-gendering the first post-Mubarak constitution. In contrast, the constitution of 2014, developed under severely circumscribed political space inhibiting women's mobilization, witnessed the exercise of women's constitutional agency to redress the containment of women's rights under the previous constitution and en-gender many elements of it, though the extent of its enforceability remains obscure. This paper draws on primary and secondary data to analyse, through a gender lens, the processes and outcomes involved in constitution drafting along three axes:context and political opportunity structures; coalitional politics, and political and ideological struggles.

Judges and Courts Destabilizing Constitutionalism: The Brazilian Judiciary Branch's Political and Authoritarian Character

Contemporary democracies may confront several instances of exceptions that co-exist with constitutional institutions; they are never free from any risks. This Article relies on recent Brazilian judicial experiences in order to present and highlight how courts and judges, from within the institutional structure, can act as elite actors that endanger the constitutional system, giving it the characteristics of unstable constitutionalism. By presenting the recent political and juridical facts that drove Brazil to constitutional crisis, the work brings not only judicial rulings but also the institutional and corporative structure that served as the main methods of avoiding the judicial reforms that could have led to a true transition from dictatorship to democracy. The conclusion is that the Brazilian courts blocked effective transitional constitutionalism in Brazil, making room for the current unstable constitutionalism.