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5 - Constitution-Making for Divided Societies: Afghanistan

from III - Constitutional Drafting and Revision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2022

David S. Law
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

This chapter begins by surveying the current literature on constitutional design constitutions for divided societies and constitutional approaches to power sharing. It pays particular attention to the view that constitutions are best understood not as contracts, but rather as coordination devices. An implication of this view for constitutional design is that, in deeply divided societies, successful coordination (and thus successful constitution-writing) may be easier to achieve if the constitution deliberately leaves certain divisive constitutional questions unresolved, with the understanding that those questions will be resolved incrementally over time. Against this theoretical background, the chapter uses the history and constitutional history of Afghanistan to illuminate the challenges of developing a constitution that can coordinate politics in a deeply divided society, and it evaluates the pros and cons of different approaches to constitutional design in such contexts.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Primary Sources

Bâli, Aslı Ü. and Lerner, Hanna (eds.), Constitution Writing, Religion and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Choudhry, Sujit (ed.), Constitutional Design for Divided Societies: Integration or Accommodation? (Oxford University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend, Thinking About Democracy: Power Sharing and Majority Rule in Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2008).Google Scholar
Reilly, Benjamin, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Barfield, Thomas J., Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, 2nd ed. (Princeton University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Chishti, Nighat Mehroze, Constitutional Development in Afghanistan (Royal Book Company, 1998).Google Scholar
Olesen, Asta, Islam and Politics in Afghanistan (Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar
Thier, J. Alexander, , ‘Big Tent, Small Tent: The Making of a Constitution in Afghanistan,’ in Miller, Laurel E. (ed.), Framing the State in Times of Transition: Case Studies in Constitution-Making (US Institute of Peace Press, 2010) 535562, https://perma.cc/Z6JA-GDQ4.Google Scholar

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