ABSTRACT
When considering increasing the level of democratic participation in political decision making it is important to identify what I have called a culture of constitutionalism, because bringing about such an increase is not just – indeed, it is not even principally – a question for the legal designers of formal constitutional rules. It is also, and arguably crucially, a question about culture.2 Constitutionalism is not just a tradition of a special kind of law making, but something with a cultural life.3 The ways in which people will make use of a set of constitutional rules are at the very least influenced by their cultures. The idea of the lobby in Britain and of the demonstration in France reflect fundamentally culturally different uses of constitutional opportunities.
