South Asia has had a tumultuous and varied experience with constitutional democracy that predates the recent rise in populism (and its study) in established democracies. And yet, this region has remained largely ignored by constitutional studies and democracy scholars.
This book addresses this gap and presents a contribution to the South Asia-centric literature on the topic of the stability and resilience of constitutional democracies. Chapters deal not only with relatively well known South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, but also with countries often ignored by scholars, such as Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Afghanistan.
The contributions consider the design and functioning of an array of institutions and actors, including political parties, legislatures, the political executive, the bureaucracy, courts, fourth branch / guarantor
institutions (such as electoral commissions), the people, and the military to examine their roles in strengthening or undermining constitutional democracy across South Asia.
Each chapter offers a contextual and jurisdictionally-tethered account of the causes behind the erosion of constitutional democracy, and some examine the resilience of constitutional institutions against democratic erosion.
Edited by:
Professor Swati Jhaveri,
Professor Tarunabh Khaitan,
Dr Dinesha Samararatne
Imprint: Hart Publishing
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781509948857
ISBN 10: 1509948856
Pages: 504
Publication Date: 01 June 2023
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface Foreword Arun Thiruvengadam (National Law School, India) Part 1: The Problem of Constitutional Resilience Decoded 1. Constitutional Resilience in South Asia: A Primer, Swati Jhaveri (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Tarunabh Khaitan (University of Oxford, UK) and Dinesha Samararatne (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka) Part 2: Constitutional Design 2. Institutional Resilience and Political Transitions in Sri Lanka and Beyond, Dian Shah (National University of Singapore, Singapore) and Mario Gomez (International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka) 3. Old Powers and New Forces in the Bhutanese Constitution – Anticipating the Resilience of a Young Constitution, Michaela Windischgraetz (University of Vienna, Austria) Part 3: Federalism 4. Territorial Dynamics in Sri Lanka: Federalism, Unitarism and Path Dependence, Jayani Nadarajalingam (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Zim Nwokora (Deakin University, Australia) 5. Proposing a Solidarity-Based Federalism for Sri Lanka, Erika Arban (Melbourne Law School, Australia) 6. The Constitutional Resilience of Human Rights in New Federal States: Local Government and the National Human Rights Commission in Nepal, Hari P. Dhungana (Nepal Open University, Nepal) and Iain Payne (University of New South Wales, Australia) Part 4: The Political Branches 7. Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Aggrandisement and Party–State Fusion in India, Tarunabh Khaitan (University of Oxford, UK) 8. Dysfunction and Ad Hocism in Agenda Setting: Compromising of the Lok Sabha in India, Devendra Damle (Open Network for Digital Commerce, India) and Shubho Roy (University of Chicago, USA) 9. Dysfunction Resilience of the Afghan Civil Service, Ebrahim Afsah (University of Vienna, Austria) Part 5: The Judiciary 10. The Maldives: A Parable of Judicial Crisis, Institutional Corrosion, and Democratic Demise, Ahmed Nazeer (University of Portsmouth, UK) 11. Judicial Evasion, Judicial Vagueness and Judicial Revisionism: A Study of the NCT of Delhi v Union of India Judgment(s), Gautam Bhatia (India) Part 6: Fourth Branch (Guarantor) Institutions 12. Sri Lanka’s Guarantor Branch: Constitutional Resilience by Stealth? Dinesha Samararatne (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka) 13. The South Asian Fourth Branch: Designing Election Commissions for Constitutional Resilience, Michael Pal (University of Ottawa, Canada) 14. Between Trust and Democracy: Th e Election Commission of India and the Question of Constitutional Accountability, M. Mohsin Alam Bhat (Jindal Global University, India) 15. The Turbulent Journey and Overlooked Opportunities of Electoral Democracy in Bangladesh, Muhammad Omar Faruque (Bangladesh Judicial Service, Bangladesh) Part 7: The Military 16. Rescuing the Agency and Resilience of Civilian Political Actors: Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan, 2008-20, Farhan Hanif Siddiqi (Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan) 17. A Frozen Democratic Transition: Pakistan’s Hybrid Regime and Weak Party System, Muhammad Salman (Habib University, Pakistan) and Marzia Raza (University of Osnabrück, Germany) Part 8: The People 18. Rethinking Constitutional Resilience from Below: Dalit Rights and Land Reform, Faizan Jawed Siddiqi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) 19. Constitutional Patriotism in India: Appreciating the People as Constitutional Actors, Jahnavi Sindhu (Humboldt University, Germany) and Vikram Aditya Narayan (Humboldt University, Germany) Part 9: Conclusion 20. Epilogue: Resilience and Political Constitutionalism in South Asia and Beyond, Philipp Dann (Humboldt University, Germany)
Swati Jhaveri is an Associate Fellow of the Asian Law Centre at the Melbourne Law School, Australia. Tarunabh Khaitan is Professor (Chair) of Public Law at the LSE Law School, UK, and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School, Australia. Dinesha Samararatne is Professor in the Department of Public & International Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo and a Senior Research Associate of the Laureate Programme in Comparative Constitutional Law, Melbourne Law School, Australia.
