The Politics of Constitutional Rigidity

Abstract What makes a constitution difficult to amend? In the world of written constitutions, it is largely assumed that the stringency of the amendment rule plays a decisive role in determining constitutional rigidity, perhaps as a result of the US experience. Interestingly so, if one looks beyond the southern border of that country, one learns that with a very similar amendment rule to that of the US, Mexico has one of the most amended constitutions in the world. If it is not the stringency of the amendment rule that determines constitutional rigidity, what is it? This book analyses the question of amendment difficulty from a contextual approach to capture its political dimension. By looking at the case of Mexico in detail, this book explores the non-institutional factors that influence the ease of amendment. Building on the insights of this case study, the book offers an analytical framework for the systematic study of constitutional change. The framework posits that constitutional change (formal and informal) takes place in an economy of change whereby the interaction between political parties, party systems, constitutional culture, and choices made by key political actors determines the availability of the different institutional means for political entrenchment provided by a given constitution.