Linking Constitutional Content and Civil Society Relationships

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project seeks to understand how the contents of national constitutions change over time and how those changes affect civil society relationships in different countries. It focuses specifically on content related to strategies toward incorporation of minority groups into public and private domains and examines what consequences they might have on majority-minority relationships. The history of a national constitution represents changing understanding of the model of a nation. In many countries over time, it is the case that, with the rise of rights discourse, cultural rights of ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority groups often become constitutionally recognized, enabling citizens freedom to practice their culture to the extent such practice does not undermine the cultural unity of the nation. This research will propose to answer the following questions: How have these transformations changed over time? Who were the leading countries in these transformations, and what precipitated them to make those changes? Furthermore, have these changes in constitutional provisions about civil society relationships produced any changes in the actual practice of minority rights protection? This project tackles these questions by collecting data on all national constitutions in the world from 1789 to 2010 and coding them into three indexes of majority-minority relationships: the cultural homogeneity model, which emphasizes congruence of cultural and civic units; the individual cultural rights model, which allows minorities to practice individual cultural rights primarily in the private sphere; and multiculturalism, which promotes and protects minority groups' collective cultural rights. Using these indexes, and drawing on insights from sociology of law and globalization studies, the project will examine the causes and consequences of changes in constitutional stipulations of minority rights. The project will reveal the influence of global factors on seemingly national legal processes. The project will also use innovative methodologies -- multi-dimensional scaling and plagiarism detection software -- to examine more precisely how legal models diffuse globally and will present a model for future research on legal changes. As a detailed effort to collect comprehensive cross-national data on how constitutional minority rights provisions have changed over the last two hundred plus years, it will advance scholarly and public understanding of minority and ethnic relations, especially as they relate to globalization. The results of the research will be disseminated broadly and globally in presentations and publications that are accessible to policy makers and lay audiences.