Arab Spring Constitution-Making: Polarization and State Building

Abstract

What determines the balance that democratizing constitutions strike between state capacity and individual rights? Some constitutions deliberately handicap state power to forestall threats to liberty, while others try to empower the government to hold the country together. We answer this question in the context of post-Arab Spring constitution-making, hypothesizing a U-shaped relationship between political polarization in the general public and net state capacity-building provisions in constitutions of new democracies. We test the hypothesis through a controlled case comparison of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, the three Arab-majority countries in which protestors successfully toppled authoritarian regimes.

Keywords: constitutions, ideologies, veto players, state capacity, democratization, middle east