Participation, Inclusion, and the Democratic Content of Constitutions

Theories of participatory and deliberative democracy contend that participatory and inclusive constitution-making processes are more likely to generate democratic outcomes than the traditional, elite-led approaches. The empirical evidence, however, has remained inconclusive and the propositions mostly normative. Using an original data from 195 constitutions promulgated in 118 countries since 1974, this study examines the impact of participatory and inclusive processes on the democratic content of constitutions. Building on the recently developed conjectures in the literature, this study introduces two original measures for individual-level public participation and aggregate-level group inclusion in constitution-making processes. The statistical analysis provides compelling empirical evidence that increased public participation is associated with an increased number of democratic provisions in constitutions, indicating that broad participatory processes can improve the democratic content of constitutions. Group inclusion, however, is not a significant predictor of the content of constitutions. The findings offer empirical support for participatory and deliberative theories of democracy and their prediction on democratic outcomes of participatory processes.