Presenter: Lyssandra Golledge
Mentor: Joel Black
Oral Presentation
Major: International Studies
I will examine the similarities between constitutions that have arisen in the Middle East during the recent Arab Spring and the constitutions of the United Kingdom and the United States of America. I hope to prove that although the new Arab Spring constitutions reflect heavy British and American influence, the lack of culturally ingrained constitutionalism is part of the reason for their ineffectiveness. Constitutionalism is the idea that the power of government should have legal limits. This concept becomes convoluted when considering who creates and enforces these legal limits if not the government itself. I will examine constitutionalism as a key factor in defining the relationship of cultures to their constitutions and will ask specifically how constitutionalism gives constitutions their authority and makes them applicable to a nation’s populations over time. Through this comparison, I will investigate how a sense of constitutionalism is created, how it is passed down and who gives it authority—the governing body or bodies, the majority population, or dissenters/minority groups—and will apply my findings to Arab Spring constitutions.
My research examines the ‘common’ people as the enforcers of these legal limitations. I demonstrate that these common citizens, both the farmers in eighteenth century America and the demonstrators in Egypt use their collective understanding of constitutionalism, as it applies to their country, to enforce their views on government through the use of informal and formal media outlets. This research seeks to understand the current situation in the Middle East by examining the histories of its economic conquerors.