Authors

Paul Fisher¹;  ¹ UCL SSEES, UK

Discussion

This paper forms part of wider PhD research asking the question how constitutional amendment might be used to address threats to the longevity of non-democratic leadership. The research asks what unique strategic utility constitutional amendment might have for non-democratic leadership when compared with alternative tools in the non-democratic arsenal.

The existing scholarship focusses on the manipulation of constitutional and legal norms by leaders to achieve non-democratic aims. Among other things, this has been referred to as “autocratic legalism” (Scheppele K.L. (2018); Corrales J (2015)). The paper applies a discourse historical analysis approach to three case studies: Vladimir Putin’s constitutional amendments within the Russian Federation in 2020, Alexander Lukashenka’s constitutional amendments in 2020-2022 and Serzh Sargsyan’s amendments in Armenia between 2015 and 2018. It considers the initiation of constitutional amendments introduced by non-democrats in order to address two questions: (i) whether such amendments are motivated by the objective of addressing threats to leadership longevity; and (ii) why such constitutional amendments may provide unique strategic utility to the non-democrat. Developing a concept that I have previously called “the Constitutional Manifesto” (Fisher, 2023), I argue that constitutional amendments present an opportunity for the non-democrat to articulate a manifesto secure from the problems posed, for example, by electoral challenge.

References

Fisher P., “Putin’s Constitutional Manifesto: Sovereignty, Primacy, Survival”, IACL-AIDC Blog (14 February 2023)

Corrales J., “Autocratic Legalism in Venezuela”, 26 J Democracy 37, 38-45 (April 2015)

Scheppelle, K.L., “Autocratic Legalism”, The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol 85(2) 2018, https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/print-archive/autocratic-legalism