Tracking Constitutional Changes in Other Countries

On September 4, 2022, a much-anticipated plebiscite to approve or reject a new constitution took place in Chile with voters overwhelmingly rejecting the proposed text. Another constitutional referendum took place this year on July 25, 2022 in Tunisia. In this case, voters approved the new constitutional text by a high margin, despite a low turnout and increasing consolidation of presidential power by President Kais Saied. These two constitutional processes are not the only ones taking place around the world. Haiti, Sri Lanka, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Central African Republic and Barbados are among those countries who have pursued, are in the process of pursuing or considering to pursue processes to change the entire constitution or just amending a part or several of it.

For legal researchers, keeping track of latest changes to the constitution, finding previous iterations and understanding the analytical context are incredibly important considerations to keep in mind at every stage of your research. Some excellent and comprehensive databases do include this type of information for a fee. However, there are a handful of free sources of information which also provide insightful, updated and contextual information related to constitutions from all over the world. In this post, I will briefly describe three fantastic free sources to help you find current and historical constitutions, do analysis on constitutional texts, data and topics, compare them and keep abreast of current events.

Among all the different free sources on constitutions from all over the world, Constitute stands out as one of the most well-known and used sites. Constitute began in 2013 as a collaborative project between Google Ideas and the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP). The idea behind this partnership was to better visualize the incredible amounts of data collected by CCP throughout the years. As you can see the top bar in the right-hand side in Constitute, you can choose to explore a particular constitution or country you’re interested in. If you click on constitutions, you will notice right away the total number of constitutions in their database (229 as of 9/14/2022), and options to download a pdf of the full text translated into English. One great feature you can make use of immediately from this page is to compare two constitutions at the same time. You click on compare next to the constitutions of your choice. Then, you just need to click on compare to visualize the full text of the two constitutions selected.

In my experience, Constitute is an incredibly powerful source to analyze Constitutions through a set of variables such as the total number of words and number of rights, and indices such as extent of executive power, judicial independence and degree of power assigned to the legislature. To understand more about the data and measurements used by CCP, it’s always good to consult the Constitutional Indices including data, definition and important secondary sources. You can also explore the indices in a specific country. Each country profile helps you visualize previous iterations of the constitutions as well as amendments with links to the full text. Last but not least, you can also compare constitutions by geographical regions based on earliest or most recent text.

Based at UCLA, the WORLD Policy Analysis Center is a collaborative platform providing data, maps and analysis on a wide range of political, social, legal and geopolitical topics. From WORLD’s main page, you can select “constitutions” to visualize several maps divided by a series of categories pertaining to constitutional rights in different areas such as gender, health, non-citizens, religion, education and many more. Each category contains more specific questions which allow users to further specify the data and their analysis. For example, under rights across religion, you have more specific questions such as “does the constitution explicitly protect freedom to not believe in religion?”, “does the constitution explicitly protect freedom of religion from infringing on the rights of others?” or “how do countries that identify in their constitution as secular treat religion?” You can compare all these questions regardless of the categories and sections they are assigned to. Furthermore, all data are available to download as well.

As I tell my students at the University of Arizona College of Law, international events happening in other jurisdictions and countries are not frozen in time. Researchers might be interested in a specific period of time, event or phenomenon. However, current events in foreign countries can have a major impact on your research,and it’s your responsibility to account for that. Here in the United States, we tend to have assumptions when it comes to constitutions which are absolutely not true in other countries, such as how often it gets amended or how long a constitution should be. In order to keep abreast of the latest headlines regarding constitutions around the world, I highly recommend ConstitutionNet. This is a service provided by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), an intergovernmental organization created in the 1980s and based in Stockholm, Sweden. Through a series of conferences, workshops, data analysis and reports, International IDEA provides a wealth of information and capacity building to help member states as well as other countries throughout the world to assess issues concerning elections, political participation and representation, and democracy in general. In ConstitutionNet in particular, you have two fantastic sources: Voices from the Field and Constitutions in the News. Voices from the Field include insightful analysis from IDEA experts. Whereas, Constitutions in the News is just a list of relevant news from trustworthy media sources about recent developments regarding constitutions from all over the world.