ABSTRACT
Not all constitutional regimes emerge out of democratic constitution-making episodes. In fact, many countries enjoying a reasonable degree of democratic governance frequently operate under constitutions adopted by state offi cials with little or no participation from ordinary citizens (unwritten constitutions would almost, by defi nition, fi t this description). 1 Other countries suffer from a different problem: they operate under constitutions that were imposed from the outside, even if drafted by an elected constituent assembly and ratifi ed in a referendum. 2 In the previous chapter, I suggested that such regimes are not necessarily illegitimate from a democratic perspective. Their claim to democratic legitimacy might lie in the fact that, although adopted through a process inconsistent with the basic principles of the democratic ideal (e.g., a constitution adopted by a group of well-intentioned jurists or by an ordinary legislature), they can be re-constituted democratically. Before exploring the question of what specifi c type of political practices amount to a democratic re-constitution (a question that will be considered in Chapter 8 ), it is necessary to determine what kind of constitutional changes amount to the creation of a new constitution. That is to say, when can we be said to be witnessing an instance of re-constitution?
