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Presents the thinking of Japanese officials on constitutional reform. Convinced that the Potsdam Declaration had left the matter to the Japanese, Irie Toshio, chief of the cabinet's Legislation Bureau, argued in two memoranda in September and October 1945, that democracy could best be achieved by strengthening the Diet and guaranteeing basic human rights. The government sought advice on constitutional reform from scholars Miyazawa Toshiyoshi and Yabe Teiji. The Foreign Ministry then follow up with tentative proposals, by Tatsuki Keiichi, to reduce the influence of the military and make the Diet fully responsible to the people. However, both Irie and Tatsuki wished to preserve imperial sovereignty and the autonomy of the imperial household. In early October, a new cabinet under Shidehara Kijūrō appointed Matsumoto Jōji to head a committee to study constitutional reform.

Deep prblems exist regarding the constitutional status of the EU, arising from the fact that the EU's powers and institutions have far outstripped the constitutional architecture which it has so far managed to evolve. The theoretical difficulty lies in trying to apply the principles of constitutional reform developed within mature liberal‐democratic states to the altogether different constitutional environment of EU treaty reform.

Describes the contention within the Japanese government for control of constitutional reform. Prince Konoe Fumimaro interpreted MacArthur's advice to him as a mandate to direct the process and secured an imperial appointment. Konoe's advisers, Sasaki Sōichi and Takagi Yasaka, solicited ideas on constitutional reform from George Atcheson, MacArthur's political adviser, until, stung by press criticism, MacArthur repudiated Konoe. Meanwhile, Matsumoto Jōji believed his cabinet committee studying constitutional reform could proceed independently of SCAP, and MacArthur ordered his staff to avoid all contact with the Matsumoto committee. After three months, the committee produced a draft constitution that MacArthur's Government Section brusquely rejected.

The puzzle addressed by this chapter is why electoral reform for the Canadian House of Commons has so rarely made it to the agenda, let alone to adoption, despite the existence of widely recognized problems with the current electoral system, the experience of several rounds of constitutional reform in which the issue could have been raised, and relatively weak constitutional barriers to reform. The first section, ‘Electoral Rules and the Party System’, provides background on how the Canadian party system has evolved under the current set of single‐seat district (SSD) plurality electoral rules. The second section, ‘Explaining the Limited Electoral Reform Agenda in Canada’, examines why electoral reform for the Canadian House of Commons has so rarely been on the political agenda. The final section, ‘Prospects for Electoral Reform in the Future’,discusses conditions under which electoral reform might come onto the agenda in the near future, and whether it is likely to do so.

The Labour Party has traditionally been aligned with a power‐hoarding model of democracy and its rhetorical commitment to constitutional reform in the mid‐1990s was largely an act‐contingent strategy to win power.

Describes the U.S. government's wartime (1942–1945) planning of the occupation of Japan. American planners clashed over the role of Japan's emperor in a postwar democratic nation. Joseph Grew and Henry Stimson favored his retention, but failed to get their view in the Potsdam Declaration, which defined the conditions for Japan's surrender. Washington's directive to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), General Douglas MacArthur, was ambiguous on constitutional reform and treatment of the emperor. This gave MacArthur an opportunity to interpret U.S. policy and place his indelible imprint on Japan's postwar political structure.

Examines the European Convention (the European Convention on the Future of Europe) within the process of constitutional reform in the EU, with an emphasis on the institutionalization of treaty reform. After an introductory section, the chapter next looks at institutionalist questions on treaty revision processes, discussing the traditional method used, that of the Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs), and aiming to identify a ‘less intergovernmental’ view of reform processes. The third section provides a historical and up‐to‐date review of the European Convention, focussing on its background, operation, and decision‐making processes. The fourth argues that choices regarding the nature of the Convention's remit and its working methods have reinforced a new landscape of constitutional reform, namely, an institutionalized setting more complex in both the players involved and its dynamics, and where institutional choices are likely to affect significantly the classic key variables of intergovernmentally driven processes. The underlying theme of the chapter is that the outcomes of the 2004 IGC will not be able to be accounted for by focussing solely on governments’ preferences and power.

The most important variable facilitating the Swedish parties' consensus on state funding was the constitutional reform of 1970. The constitutional reform strengthened the position of the bourgeois parties since it rendered minority governments (during which the centre-right opposition parties enjoyed more influence both in parliamentary committees and commissions of enquiry) more likely. Furthermore, the constitutional reform was an incentive for the bourgeois parties to cooperate more closely. Put differently, they could adopt an office-seeking strategy, which in turn facilitated a consensus on state funding to political parties. Prior to 1970, the Social Democrats electorally and organizationally dominated to an extent that allowed them to marginalize its competitors in questions of party funding. Exploiting the coordinative discourse on political corruption, the Social Democrats were able to discredit business donations to the bourgeois parties, leaving these no other choice than to agree to state funding.

The Constitution of the Fifth French Republic was adopted by referendum in September 1958, and this chapter explores the relationship between the president and the prime minister in that Fifth Republic. The first section of the chapter, Patterns of Political Leadership, provides an overview of presidential–prime ministerial relations. The second section, French Semi‐Presidentialism in Context, discusses the constitutional situation, the founding context of the 1962 reform, and the relationship between the president and the parliamentary majority. The concluding section, The Contemporary Nature of French Semi‐Presidentialism, considers the wider context of presidential–prime ministerial relations, and discusses the changing parameters of executive leadership generally. In these ways, the contemporary nature of the Fifth Republic's semi‐presidential system is established.

This chapter briefly traces the history of the Human Rights Act, contextualising the academic and popular debates which have seen the long-term future of the Act placed in doubt. It introduces some of the core constitutional questions addressed in this volume, detailing the individual essaying and highlighting common themes.

This chapter attempts to chart the principal events leading up to the Government's decision on 12 June 2003 to announce that the judicial business of the House of Lords would be transferred to a supreme court, on to the enactment of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and the first steps towards practical realisation of the new court. The policy to have a supreme court was, from the outset, inextricably linked — at least in the minds of officials and ministers — with a decision to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor (later revised, following parliamentary pressure in the House of Lords, to retaining a much-reformed post of Lord Chancellor). The chapter is a case study on the British constitution's ‘flexible’ character and the absence of strong normative controls of the constitutional reform process.

In 1994, Bolivia undertook a major constitutional and electoral reform, in which a closed‐list proportional representation (PR) system for the Lower House of the Congress was replaced by a mixed‐member proportional (MMP) system. Article 60 of the reformed constitution establishes that 68 deputies out of a constitutionally fixed number of 130 will be chosen by plurality rule in single‐seat districts, while the remaining 62 will be chosen by party‐list voting according to proportional representation in nine regional multi‐seat districts. This new electoral system establishes seats linkage between the two tiers such that the overall allocation of seats is determined proportionally according to list votes at the level of each multi‐seat district. In analyzing the underlying causes of the electoral reform in 1994, Mayorga first deals with the widely perceived fundamental problems and flaws of the traditional PR system and, second, addresses the main causes leading to the adoption of an MMP system, focusing on the context in which the politics of electoral reform was carried out.

Constitutional monarchy is a form of monarchy governed by rules. In Britain, these rules are of two kinds—non‐statutory rules governing hereditary succession and statutory rules laying down certain conditions that the holder of the throne must meet. Although descent is the main criterion of succession, the great constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century, culminating in the Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Act of Settlement of 1701, confirmed that the succession could be regulated by parliament. The British monarchy is a parliamentary monarchy. Indeed, the succession can only be altered by Act of Parliament. Provision is also made by Act of Parliament for cases when the sovereign is incapable or a minor, where a Regent acts in place of the sovereign. The rules regulating the royal consort and the heir to the throne and the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 are analysed. The rules of succession, being a product of the religious struggles of the seventeenth century, are now ripe for reform. So also is the Royal Marriages Act.

Reform of the House of Lords provides critical insights not just into the nature of New Labour's statecraft but also into the challenges of constitutional political analysis. This examines empirical and analytical debates and concludes that change on the Index of Bicameralism has been marginal.

The logic of legal constitutionalism promotes the role of judges as external regulators of political behaviour. It therefore seeks to increase the degree of constitutional rigidity by seeking to locate some basic rights, values, or principles beyond the reach of elected politicians. New Labour sought to embrace elements of legal constitutionalism while maintaining a ‘political constitution’. The outcome is a confused and anomalous element of the broader bi‐constitutionality argument.

Updating Lijphart's analysis reveals that New Labour attempted to create a multi‐level polity based upon a more consensual model of democracy within an increasingly frail conception of the Westminster Model (i.e. modified majoritarianism) at the national level. A statecraft strategy based upon constitutional co‐existence and the parallel operation of markedly different models of democracy is likely to prove highly unstable within a unitary state.

Two decades have passed since “constitutional multiculturalism” made its first appearance in Chiapas, Mexico; but, the constitutional reforms and legislation passed governing indigenous culture and rights have not impacted the lives of indigenous peoples. How do we explain these poor results? This work argues that, through their wording of these constitutional reforms, legislators recognized the rights of indigenous collectives, but in the same texts, used language which limits these rights. This contradictory language includes provisions to increase the state's powers, facilitating intervention into the lives of indigenous peoples rather than promoting genuine autonomy. The constitutional reforms implemented in Mexico and Chiapas since 1990, then, have had little net effect on the rights of indigenous peoples to autonomy and self-determination. They have, however, helped the neoliberal state in Mexico to institute a new legal framework, with multicultural components, to ease the penetration of capital into indigenous regions.