The Institutional Foundations of the Uneven Global Spread of Constitutional Courts

Dongwook Kim, Paul Nolette

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Since the third wave of democratization, specialized constitutional courts have spread widely across developed and developing countries and become key to government accountability, rights protection, and cross-institutional conflict resolution. Simultaneously, nearly half of all constitutional court adoptions have occurred in Europe. What explains the global, yet Eurocentric, spread of constitutional courts? Countries’ institutional endowments, particularly domestic and international legal institutions, are key to this crucial choice of constitutional design. Common law countries are less likely to establish specialized constitutional courts than their civil law counterparts due to their domestic legal system’s relatively weaker affinity with the constitutional court model. Furthermore, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission—the main international organization specifically promoting constitutional courts—has catalyzed their wide and rapid spread especially, but not exclusively, in Europe. Our theory gains robust support from event history analyses of 172 developed and developing countries from 1947 to 2019.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)294-311
    Number of pages18
    JournalPerspectives on Politics
    Volume22
    Issue number1
    Early online date1 Aug 2023
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2024

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