Konstitutionalismi poliittisena ilmiönä ja tutkimuskohteena

Authors

• Dag Anckar

Abstract

Constitutionalism is a central as well as contested concept in political science. Whereas as some argue that any political order that falls within the rule of law thereby falls within the frame of constitutionalism, other define constitutionalism in terms of the extent to which of Research freedoms and rights are constitutionally safeguarded. The vagueness of the concept becomes especially troublesome in research settings that relate constitutionalism to another equally central and contested concept, namely democracy. Studies of the diffusion of constitutional texts and ideologies suggest that the transfer of institutions is in many cases dysfunctional to the maintenance of traditional systems. Such studies would benefit from explorations of interactions between empirical and rational constitutional components and consequences of clashes between such components. Since empirical and rational ingredients may have different intellectual sources, clashes often convey ambiguous impressions of constitutional moralities and may thereby decrease the legitimacy of constitutions.