Making Constitutions

Gabriel L. Negretto (Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is Professor of Political Science at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), located in Mexico City. He holds a law degree from the University of Buenos Aires, and both a Master of International Affairs with specialization in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Negretto has been visiting fellow and associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, Princeton University, The New School for Social Research, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and Columbia University. He has published numerous articles on political institutions, institutional design, and constitutional change in American, European, and Latin American academic journals such as the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Law and Society Review, Latin American Politics and Society, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Government and Opposition, and Desarrollo Económico. Negretto's most recent work, other than the present book, is the Latin American Constitutional Change Database (http://la-constitutionalchange.cide.edu/home).

• Part I. The Logic of Constitutional Choice: Theory and Data: 1. Constitutional change and patterns of design; 2. A two-level theory of constitutional choice; 3. Determinants of variation in constitutional choice; Part II. Case Studies: The Origins of Reforms: 4. Constitutional change as a means to consolidate power: Argentina 1949; 5. Constitutional change as a strategy to redistribute power: Argentina 1994; 6. Constitutional change as a response to state failure: Colombia 1991; 7. Constitutional change as a remedy for ungovernability: Ecuador 1998.

'Gabriel Negretto challenges the traditional wisdom, largely inspired by the experiences of the United Kingdom and the United States, which conceives constitutions as stable frameworks for political action. With a focus on Latin America, he shows that constitutions can be as unstable as political parties and electoral behavior are in the region, thus making the choices of institutions endogenous to the political process. This work will be of interest to students of political institutions everywhere.' Josep Colomer, Georgetown University