Inferring Mechanisms for Global Constitutional Progress

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of the provision space to analyze global constitutional change, revealing a hierarchical dependency mechanism that influences the adoption of legal provisions, especially new political rights.

Contribution

It uncovers a third mechanism—hierarchical dependencies—affecting constitutional evolution, complementing known global and network influences, and offers a new framework for understanding legal development.

Findings

Hierarchical dependencies influence constitutional change.

The emergence of new political rights is driven by these dependencies.

Provision space analysis reveals the importance of foundational provisions.

Abstract

Constitutions help define domestic political orders, but are known to be influenced by two international mechanisms: one that reflects global temporal trends in legal development, and another that reflects international network dynamics such as shared colonial history. We introduce the provision space; the growing set of all legal provisions existing in the world's constitutions over time. Through this we uncover a third mechanism influencing constitutional change: hierarchical dependencies between legal provisions, under which the adoption of essential, fundamental provisions precedes more advanced provisions. This third mechanism appears to play an especially important role in the emergence of new political rights, and may therefore provide a useful roadmap for advocates of those rights. We further characterise each legal provision in terms of the strength of these mechanisms.