South Sudan president lifts the new transitional constitution to crowds attending an independence ceremony in Juba in July 2011. Andrew Burton/AP/Press Association. All rights reserved.Constitutions comprise the rules, principles, and laws that define the relations between the government and people. Edmund Burke, a noted statesman and thinker of the eighteenth century, regarded the constitution as “an evolving contract between the past and present”, one that required constraint to control revolutionary passions for liberty. He of course railed against those who used it for revolutionary purposes, which included Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Yet it was precisely this passionate aspiration that has sustained the US constitution and helped drive efforts to assert its influence overseas.
In the early 1990s, for instance, some US pundits insisted that in order to fill the political vacuum left by the fall of the Soviet Union, countries should incorporate the US bill of rights into their constitutions. Few of course took these calls seriously; however, they have helped underscore the difficult and often delicate process of using constitutional ammendments to advance democratic values and peace-making, particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
A number of scholars have studied the benefits of this process. Many, including Helen Lerner, argue that constitutional amendments during peace negotiations can reinforce institutional accountability. But they concede that, because negotiations typically include only political elites, constitutions should be amended on a gradualist basis, with the aim of preventing anyone’s normative perspective from dominating future decision-making.
