Constituents Before Assembly

Todd A. Eisenstadt is Professor of Government at American University, Washington DC. His democratization and rule of law scholarship includes his award-winning dissertation book, Courting Democracy in Mexico: Party Strategies and Electoral Institutions (Cambridge, 2004). His research has been funded by Fulbright, the Ford and Mellon Foundations, and the National Science Foundation. He has held visiting appointments at El Colegio de México, Harvard University, Massachusetts, the University of California, San Diego, and the Latin American Social Science Faculty (FLACSO) in Ecuador. A. Carl LeVan is Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University, Washington, DC. He is the author of Dictators and Democracy in African Development: The Political Economy of Good Governance in Nigeria (Cambridge, 2015), and co-editor of African State Governance: Subnational Politics and National Power (2015). Prior to receiving his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego, he worked as a legislative director in the US Congress and later worked as a technical advisor to Nigeria's National Assembly. Tofigh Maboudi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Loyola University, Chicago. His research on constitutional reform processes has appeared in the American Political Science Review and Political Research Quarterly. Prior to receiving his Ph.D. in Political Science from American University Washington, DC, he worked as a foreign media consultant in Tehran, Iran where he received his Master's degree in North American Studies. During his Ph.D. program, he received several awards including the American University's Award for Outstanding Scholarship at the Graduate Level.

• Introducing constitutions as political process; 1. A call to pens (even if not mightier than swords): how context and process prevail over content in constitutional change; 2. Making the constituents King: how constituent deliberation on new constitutions democratizes more than mere citizen participation; 3. Parchment politics: the importance of context and conditions to the convening of constitutions; 4. The logic of 'top down' elite constitutionalism: how imposed processes may (but usually do not) produce better democracy; 5. The logic of 'bottom up' constitutionalism: how popular processes tilt the odds in favor of democracy; 6. Interest groups versus individual participation, and the gap between ideal constitutional process and real world practices.

'Normative theories of constitution making have traditionally proposed that only constitutions adopted with a high degree of citizen involvement can work as the foundational moment of a vigorous democracy. Although this claim seems intuitively plausible, the link between participatory constitution making and democratization has never been systematically tested. This book is the first to provide empirical support to the democratizing effect of citizen involvement in constitutional moments, yet showing that participation at the early deliberative stage of constitution making is what matters for the inauguration of a true liberal democracy. Constituents before Assembly is a major contribution to the field of constitutional politics and will be indispensable reading not only for scholars interested in comparative constitutionalism but also for international agencies and reformers engaged in actual processes of constitution building.' Gabriel L. Negretto,, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico (CIDE)