Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq: How to Save a Constitutional Democracy
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | Yaniv Roznai |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12193 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
HOW TO SAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY by TOM GINSBURG
AND AZIZ Z. HUQ
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018, pp. 295, $35.00)
It would not surprise any comparative constitutionalist or political scientist
that we are witnessing a crisis of constitutional democracies around the
world. It would be enough to take a quick look at the range of recently
published books on the erosion or decline of democracy to understand that
democracy is at risk.
1
Even in the EU, where it was considered stable,
democracy is backsliding.
2
As the 2019 Freedom House Report indicates,
2018 marked a serious crisis of democracy and recorded the thirteenth
consecutive year of decline in global freedom as 68 countries suffered from a
decrease in civil and political rights.
3
Whether the phenomenon is identified as democratic `decay', `decline',
`erosion', `retrogression', `rot' or `backsliding',
4
it seems that democracies
around the globe are under stress, a stress that clearly presents an important
challenge to public law scholarship.
5
In their new book, How to Save a
Constitutional Democracy, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq take upon this
challenge.
Drawing from examples from around the world, Ginsburg and Huq analyse
the constitutional mechanisms populist leaders use (or abuse
6
) to erode the
democratic order. They also argue persuasively that the United States is also
vulnerable to such an erosion. However, the book does not stop here. As its
title hints, in contrast with other titles as `how democracy dies' or `how
democracy ends',
7
it carries an optimistic tone by asking `how to save a
constitutional democracy', a question that is accompanied by a set of
constitutional design and other mechanisms that can respond to the threats and
assist in protecting the constitutional democratic order. Accordingly, this book
deals, probably, with the most burning issue of public law in current days.
666
1 See, for example, M.A. Graber et al. (eds.), Constitutional Democracy in Crisis?
(2018); S. Levitsky and D. Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (2018); D. Runciman, How
Democracy Ends (2018); Y. Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom
Is in Danger and How to Save It (2018).
2 See, for example, P. Blokker, New Democracies in Crisis?: A Comparative
Constitutional Study of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia
(2013); A. Jakab and D. Kochenov (eds.), The Enforcement of EU Law and Values ±
Ensuring Member States' Compliance (2017).
3 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2019 (2019), at
sites/default/files/Feb2019_FH_FITW_2019_Report_ForWeb-compressed.pdf>.
4 See, generally, T.G. Daly, `Democratic Decay: Conceptualising an Emerging
Research Field' (2019) 11 Hague J. on the Rule of Law 9.
5 See R. Dixon, `Editorial' (2018) 16 ICON 1049.
6 On a particular type of abuse ± that of constitutional change mechanisms ± in order to
undermine democracy, see, generally, D. Landau, `Abusive Constitutionalism' (2013)
47 University of California Davis Law Rev. 189.
7 Levitsky and Ziblatt, op. cit., n. 1; Runciman, op. cit., n. 1.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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