The Comparative Constitutional Compliance Database

Jerg Gutmann, Katarzyna Metelska-Szaniawska and Stefan Voigt

No 57, ILE Working Paper Series from University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics

Abstract: This article introduces a novel database that measures governments' compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we aggregate into an overall indicator of constitutional compliance: property rights and the rule of law, political rights, civil rights, and basic human rights. The database covers 168 countries over the period 1900 to 2020 and can be used by researchers interested in studying the determinants or the effects of (non)compliance with constitutions. Our investigation of the stylized facts of constitutional compliance does not reveal a long-term trend toward more compliance. Parliamentary democracies are the regimes with the highest level of constitutional compliance, whereas military dictatorships perform the worst. Although compliance is not determined by a constitution's breadth, constitutional design does still matter. Constitutions that allow for the dismissal of the head of state or government for violating the constitution achieve higher compliance levels.

Keywords: constitutional compliance; constitutional economics; constitutional political economy; de jure-de facto gap; executive constraints; governance indicators; measurement of institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 K10 K38 K42 O57 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/249698/1/ile-wp-2022-57.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The comparative constitutional compliance database (2024)
Working Paper: The Comparative Constitutional Compliance Database (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ilewps:57

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ILE Working Paper Series from University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().