Comparative constitutional law has a long pedigree, but the comparative study of constitution-making has emerged and taken form only in the last quarter-century. While much of the initial impetus came from the study of the American and French constituent assemblies in the late eighteenth century, this volume exemplifies the large comparative scope of current research. The contributors discuss constituent assemblies in South East Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, and in Nordic countries. Among the new insights they provide is a better understanding of how constituent assemblies may fail, either by not producing a document at all or by adopting a constitution that fails to serve as a neutral framework for ordinary politics. In a theoretical afterword, Jon Elster, an inspirational thinker on the current topic, offers an analysis of the micro-foundations of constitution-making, with special emphasis on the role of crises-generated passions.

Jon Elster is Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Science, Department of Political Science at Columbia University, and the 2016 recipient of the Skytte Prize in Political Science. He has authored more than twenty monographs, most recently Securities against Misrule (2013), and is currently preparing a comparative analysis of the Federal Convention and the first French Constituent Assembly. Roberto Gargarella has written and edited more than 20 books, including Latin American Constitutionalism, 1810-2010 (2013) and The Legal Foundations of Inequality (Cambridge, 2010). He has been awarded a John Guggenheim Foundation grant, a Harry Frank Guggenheim grant, and a Fulbright grant. He has been a Visiting Professor in Universities in Latin America, Europe and the United States. Vatsal Naresh is a Ph.D. student at Yale University, Connecticut, and focuses on democratic theory, political violence, and constitution-making. Bjørn Erik Rasch has written or edited thirteen books, most recently Parliaments and Government Formation: Unpacking Investiture Rules (2015), and numerous journal articles in comparative politics and political economy.