Mode of promulgation

In most countries, "the Constitution" refers to one compact document made up of a set of articles that specify how the state is to be constituted and what norms it must follow. This is the usual sense in which the word is used. But not every country works this way — the United Kingdom, notably, has no single document that can be pointed to as its constitution; instead it has a series of documents, statutes and conventions that, taken together, are referred to as its constitution.

However a constitution is written down, many constitutions around the world exist only on paper — as mere words on parchment with little real effect on how the country is actually governed. The crucial question, then, is not simply whether a country has a constitution, but how effective that constitution actually is in shaping real life, and that effectiveness depends on several factors, the first of which is the constitution's mode of promulgation — how the constitution came into being in the first place, who crafted it, and how much authority those framers actually possessed.

In many countries, constitutions crafted by unpopular military rulers or leaders lacking real public support end up remaining defunct even after being formally adopted, because they never carried genuine legitimacy to begin with. By contrast, the most successful constitutions in the world — India's, South Africa's and the United States' among them — were all created in the aftermath of popular national movements that had already earned broad public trust. India's Constitution was formally drafted by a Constituent Assembly that sat between December 1946 and November 1949, but its real authority drew on something much older: a long history of the nationalist movement, which had shown a remarkable ability to bring different sections of Indian society along with it. Because the Constitution was drawn up by people who already enjoyed immense public credibility, who could negotiate across and command the respect of a wide cross-section of society, and who had convinced people the Constitution was not simply a tool for their own personal advancement, the final document reflected a genuinely broad national consensus of its time. …