Constitutionalism and Ethnic Conflict

Abstract

The role of a constitution and a constitutional order in political development is generally not discussed in recent literature on the comparative politics of developing societies. It is more or less taken for granted that, in the division between developed and developing societies, the former are identified with matwe institutions of legitimate order that provide political stability, continuity of political authority, and established rules for conflict settlement; the latter are characterized by the weakness or absence of such institutions. ‘Ibis is the analytical scheme in Huntington’s now classic study, Political Order in Changing Societies.’ In this work, there is no index entry for “constitution,” “constitutionalism,” or “constitutional order.” The absence of such references was not considered anomalous, for it was assumed that constitutional practice and norms, designs and processes, were the defining characteristics of mature developed societies. Instead of examining the role of constitutions in the evolution of developing societies, comparative political studies like Huntington’s focused on the polity’s structural foundations and the functional nature of political organizations. Huntington claimed that the difference between developed and developing societies was not in the form, but rather in the degree, of government. Constitutionalism, the study of constitutions in the workings of a mature political system, in this view, rightly belongs to examining the various forms of political systems available in the modem world. Conversely, his study implied, efficacy or degree of government did not follow from the adoption of a constitution in the making of political order in a developing society. Recent events in Europe, beginning with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, raise once again questions of ethnicity, nationalism, and political development. For much of the second half of the twentieth century, these were seen as problems pertinent to the developing societies of Africa, Asia, and South America and only of comparative ...