Redesigning the State: The Politics of Constitutional Change

Paul G. Thomas is a political science professor at the University of
Manitoba and the co-author of Canadian Public Administration:
Problematical Perspectives.

This book explores the process of constitution-making in Canada, Belgium, the United Kingdom, the United States, West Germany, Spain, and Eastern Europe. Constitutions represent the blueprint for the uses of public power in societies, and thus the processes of constitutional change involve fundamental political issues. The experiences of the countries covered obviously differ, but the editors and several contributors are interested in the commonalities of constitution-making. All of the contributors are acknowledged experts on the political processes of their countries. Their essays are mainly aimed at a professional and academic audience. The editors of this collection are Canadian academics, and they provide a valuable framework for thinking about the constitutional process under the following headings: varieties of constitutions, sources of constitutional changes, the mechanisms and processes of constitutional change, and the outcomes of constitutional change. The essay that deals with the Canadian constitutional review process (1980-1982) is written by Professor Allan Cairns, who also served as the research director for studies on political institutions for the Macdonald Commission. His essay contains numerous valuable insights, and the overall conclusion would be endorsed by most observers: “The limited constitutional settlement... was acclaimed more for its temporary closure of the constitutional debate than for its intrinsic qualities or its likely contribution to resolving the constitutional malaise.” Articles on the United Kingdom and Belgium provide particularly interesting reading from a Canadian perspective. A concluding essay by Daniel Elazar, an American academic, is useful because it seeks to classify constitutions into five models, as a starting point for further comparative analysis of constitution-making. “Constitutional choice,” Elazar reminds us, “is more art than science.” One suspects after reading the case studies in this book that constitutional framers often lack precise knowledge of how changes will reverberate throughout the political system, having impacts in ways and in locations that were little suspected at the time.