Why Do Countries Adopt Constitutional Review?

In recent decades, there has been a wide-ranging global movement towards constitutional review. This development poses important puzzles of political economy: Why would self-interested governments willingly constrain themselves by constitutional means? What explains the global shift toward judicial...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of law, economics, & organization economics, & organization, 2014-08, Vol.30 (3), p.587-622
Main Authors: Ginsburg, Tom, Versteeg, Mila
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Constitutional courts
Constitutional law
Constitutional review
Countries
Democracy
Economic models
Economic theory
Government
International law
Judicial review
Law
Law schools
Political economy
Political parties
Statistical significance
Studies
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Summary:In recent decades, there has been a wide-ranging global movement towards constitutional review. This development poses important puzzles of political economy: Why would self-interested governments willingly constrain themselves by constitutional means? What explains the global shift toward judicial supremacy? Though different theories have been proposed, none have been systematically tested against each other using quantitative empirical methods. In this article, we utilize a unique new dataset on constitutional review for 204 countries for the period 1781-2011 to test various theories that explain the adoption of constitutional review. Using a fixed-effects spatial lag model, we find substantial evidence that the adoption of constitutional review is driven by domestic electoral politics. By contrast, we find no general evidence that constitutional review adoption results from ideational factors, federalism, or international norm diffusion.
ISSN:8756-6222
1465-7341
DOI:10.1093/jleo/ewt008