The Entrenchment of Democracy

Explores ways in which written constitutions shape the political arena, through regulating parties, voting and the management of elections.

In democracies, constitutions set the term of political contestation. In our era of democratic backsliding, they shape the probabilities of democracy's survival and decay. This volume considers the legal and political issues related to constitutional design of elections, parties, and voters, featuring a diverse range of voices.This volume of essays brings together a group of leading political scientists, legal scholars, and political theorists to describe and analyze the body of constitutional law and practice within and upon democratic institutions, in particular examining how constitutional law shapes electoral democracy. Constitutional law and practice on this question are complex and varied. This volume therefore takes a thematic and regional approach: it selects a range of key theoretical questions related to democratic constitutional design and offers a series of chapters featuring a diverse range of voices, as well as a blend of theory, qualitative studies, and quantitative methods. Readers will gain a multifaceted understanding of a phenomenon of growing importance. The volume will also be useful to students of comparative constitutionalism, who will gain a rich array of empirical evidence to stimulate further work. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.