There is widespread agreement that democracy today faces unprecedented challenges. Populism has pushed governments in new and surprising constitutional directions. Analysing the constitutional system of illiberal democracies (from Venezuela to Poland) and illiberal phenomena in 'mature democracies' that are justified in the name of 'the will of the people', this book explains that this drift to mild despotism is not authoritarianism, but an abuse of constitutionalism. Illiberal governments claim that they are as democratic and constitutional as any other. They also claim that they are more popular and therefore more genuine because their rule is based on conservative, plebeian and 'patriotic' constitutional and rule of law values rather than the values liberals espouse. However, this book shows that these claims are deeply deceptive - an abuse of constitutionalism and the rule of law, not a different conception of these ideas.

The Routledge Handbook of IIliberalism is the first authoritative reference work dedicated to illiberalism as a complex social, political, cultural, legal, and mental phenomenon. Although illiberalism is most often discussed in political and constitutional terms, its study cannot be limited to such narrow frames. This Handbook comprises sixty individual chapters authored by an internationally recognized group of experts who present perspectives and viewpoints from a wide range of academic disciplines. Chapters are devoted to different facets of illiberalism, including the history of the idea and its competitors, its implications for the economy, society, government and the international order, and its contemporary iterations in representative countries and regions. The Routledge Handbook of IIliberalism will form an important component of any library's holding; it will be of benefit as an academic reference, as well as being an indispensable resource for practitioners, among them journalists, policy makers and analysts, who wish to gain an informed understanding of this complex phenomenon.

There is widespread agreement that democracy today faces unprecedented challenges. Populism has pushed governments in new and surprising constitutional directions. Analysing the constitutional system of illiberal democracies (from Venezuela to Poland) and illiberal phenomena in 'mature democracies' that are justified in the name of 'the will of the people', this book explains that this drift to mild despotism is not authoritarianism, but an abuse of constitutionalism. Illiberal governments claim that they are as democratic and constitutional as any other. They also claim that they are more popular and therefore more genuine because their rule is based on conservative, plebeian and 'patriotic' constitutional and rule of law values rather than the values liberals espouse. However, this book shows that these claims are deeply deceptive - an abuse of constitutionalism and the rule of law, not a different conception of these ideas.

This volume considers the problem of legal universals at the level of the rule of law and human rights, which have fundamentally different pedigrees, and attempts to come to terms with the new unease arising from the universal application of human rights. Given the juridicization of human rights, rule of law and human rights expectations have become significantly intertwined: human rights are enforced with the instruments of the rule of law and are thus limited by the restricted reach thereof.
The first section of this volume considers the difficulties of universalistic claims and offers a number of possible solutions for adapting universal expectations to specific contexts. The second section considers problems of human rights politics; sections three and four present empirical studies about the appearance and disappearance of the rule of law and fundamental rights in Western and non-Western societies.Special attention is paid to the problems of developing countries, with a specific focus on past and present developments in Iran. These empirical studies indicate that the acceptance of human rights and the rule of law is historically contingent and cannot simply be considered as a matter of culture.

Until the 1990s, constitutionalism in Eastern Europe was considered to be an outmoded concept of the nineteenth century. Changes in the region, however, have brought back the fundamental question of the need to restrict government power through social self-binding. This text discusses the mechanisms of such restriction, including different forms of the separation of powers and constitutional review. It relates the theoretical and practical importance of the issue to the present worldwide discontent with majoritarian democracy and the growing disrepute of parliaments. Increasing executive efficiency is, however, a threat to fundamental rights, and the battlecry of efficiency is often only a means to new despotism and inefficiency. A careful re-evalution of the concept of constitutionalism assists in the search for a useful balance between majoritarianism and rights, and in the avoidance of all forms of public tyranny. Written in non-technical language and using the most important English, American, French, and German examples of constitutional history, the book also examines East European (in particular, Russian) and Latin American examples, in part to illustrate certain dead-ends in constitutional development.

This law school casebook examines how the vast increase in international movements of people, capital, goods, ideas and information affects politics in and beyond nation-states, the rule of law and separation of powers, and fundamental rights. It contains case excerpts from at least 40 countries in all continents, examining the assumptions, choices and trade-offs, strategies and effects of decisions from constitutional courts and human rights tribunals in different legal systems and political contexts. It discusses different theories of constitutionalism and how constitutional democracies address similar issues, in different institutional settings. The fourth edition contains two new chapters addressing respectively illiberal and populist constitutionalism and developing national and transnational constitutional treatments of climate change. In addition, this edition newly covers transgender equality rights, recent constitutional treatments of secession movements, and use of emergency powers to confront the Covid-19 pandemic.

The field of comparative constitutional law has grown immensely over the past couple of decades. Once a minor and obscure adjunct to the field of domestic constitutional law, comparative constitutional law has now moved front and centre. Driven by the global spread of democratic government and the expansion of international human rights law, the prominence and visibility of the field, among judges, politicians, and scholars has grown exponentially. Even in the United States, where domestic constitutional exclusivism has traditionally held a firm grip, use of comparative constitutional materials has become the subject of a lively and much publicized controversy among various justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. The trend towards harmonization and international borrowing has been controversial. Whereas it seems fair to assume that there ought to be great convergence among industrialized democracies over the uses and functions of commercial contracts, that seems far from the case in constitutional law. Can a parliamentary democracy be compared to a presidential one? A federal republic to a unitary one? Moreover, what about differences in ideology or national identity? Can constitutional rights deployed in a libertarian context be profitably compared to those at work in a social welfare context? Is it perilous to compare minority rights in a multi-ethnic state to those in its ethnically homogeneous counterparts? These controversies form the background to the field of comparative constitutional law, challenging not only legal scholars, but also those in other fields, such as philosophy and political theory. Providing the first single-volume, comprehensive reference resource, the 'Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law' will be an essential road map to the field for all those working within it, or encountering it for the first time. Leading experts in the field examine the history and methodology of the discipline, the central concepts of constitutional law, constitutional processes, and institutions - from legislative reform to judicial interpretation, rights, and emerging trends.

The Constitution was written to shape human behavior and affairs, and it does so by appealing to people's hearts, not only their minds. An interdisciplinary analysis sheds new light on the emotions that underlie constitutional law, with many cogent examples.

As broadcasting systems transform - both in societies marking a post- communist transition and in the rest of Europe and the United States - opportunities for "access" are frequently put forward and debated. Just as frequently, little is done to analyze what is meant by access and how the concept fits into a theoretical framework. Access issues proliferate, not only for the new statutes concerning broadcasting licenses, but for cable television regimens and for the information infrastructures of the future. Access becomes the hope of social groups, religious organizations, politicians, redemptive in its impact on the democratic process. Given the range of uses, given the consequences imputed to access, in the broadcasting field, more attention to its various meanings is long overdue. This volume of essays is a partial answer. The book has its origins in a conference held in June 1993 at the Institute for Constitutional and Legislative Policy at the Central European University in Budapest. The purpose of the conference was to gather scholars with a commitment to exploring the theoretical and actual implications of various access regimes as they have been or were then being practised or proposed. The time was a vital one as debates continued throughout the region on the shape of proposed broadcasting legislation. The conference offered an opportunity to review the political context in which access was being considered at a raw and early moment in the transitions to democracy. Hungary was still deadlocked in its "media wars", a confrontation between the major political parties over the course of society in which the conduct and control of broadcasting was seen as a defining issue. The Czech Republic had just split from its Slovak counterpart and the implications for the role of broadcasting in the building of a nation were self-evident. Problems of hate speech and lustration - a negative form of access: access by society to information about the personal past of public figures - compounded the difficulty of policy-making. Access issues yielded concerns about privatization since the ownership of instruments of the press are a key factor in access and that implicated the choice of licensees, the conditions under which they should operate, whether and to what extent foreign investment should be allowed. The inevitable, underlying problem concerns the role of the state in establishing rules, maintaining a hand in establishing the narratives of continuity and, indeed, in letting go and fostering the processes of change. The responses are organized in four sections: theories of media access; access to media in Europe and the United States; judicial review of access to the media; and the media and the political arena.

This book, based on two international conferences at Princeton University and the Central European University, is a handy guide to the problem of corruption in transition countries, with an important comparative content. Political Corruption in Transition is distinguished from similar publications by at least two features: by the quality of the carefully selected and edited essays ans by its original treatment. Instead of the usual preaching and excommunications, this Sceptic's Handbook represents down-to-earth realism. Combines general issues with case studies and original research. The geographic coverage is wide, though it is ideas rather then a geography that drive the volume's organization.