In recent years, many constitutions in Africa were drafted anew or were considerably revised. Often, the international community has been involved in designing and supporting the implementation of respective constitution making processes. In many of these cases, especially in those emerging from violent conflict or after the fall of authoritarian regimes, the support has been aimed at propagating inclusive and participatory constitution making processes. Public Participation in African Constitutionalism aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the impact of public participation in constitution making processes in Africa, digging beneath the rhetoric of public participation as being at the heart of any successful transition towards democracy and constitutionalism.
The book demonstrates that in spite of growing international support, solid empirical evidence on the merits of public participation for a better democratic performance and the emergence of constitutionalism subsequent to the process is still not yet available. Using case studies from Central African Republic, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Morocco, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the book investigates various aspects of participatory constitution making: from conception, to processes, and specific contents that trigger ambivalent dynamics in such processes. It questions the abstract glorification of public participation and aims to explain in a combination of theoretical and empirical perspectives what public participation does in more concrete terms, and which actual lessons might be drawn from those experiences.
About the Author
Tania Abbiate is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy, Germany
Markus Böckenförde is Executive Director and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Duisburg, Germany, and a Visiting Professor at the Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary
Veronica Federico is Researcher of Comparative Public Law, Department of Legal Studies, University of Florence, Italy
