External Support to Constitution Building Processes

Sammanfattning

This report draws on three decades of experience with external support to constitution building processes to examine what makes support effective and how its usefulness might be improved, in the interests of constitutional stability. The report is framed around questions set out by the Swedish EBA in an invitation to undertake the project. These included a particular focus on external support for inclusion in constitution building processes and for constitution building in the context of conflict. The EBA also asked about the external support provided by Sweden, which is used in the report as a case study of a donor state.
The last three decades have witnessed widespread constitution building activity, much of which has attracted external support of some kind. External support plays a sensitive role at the interface of the national and the international, with implications for national ownership of the constitution, its implementation in practice, and its longer-term stability. The report comes at a critical time, when constitution building appears to have stalled and in some cases been reversed, the relationship between peace and constitution building processes presents important new questions, and geopolitical shifts make external support more challenging still.
Constitution building includes all processes that relate to making a new constitution or amending an existing constitution, including the resolution of conflict and negotiation of a political settlement; the transitional period; the negotiation, design, drafting and approval of a constitutional text; its promulgation; and implementation. Constitution building is a political, rather than a technical activity. The contexts in which it takes place are diverse, varying with the features of the constitution building state, its constitutional history, and its relations with other states, in its immediate region and globally.