ABSTRACT
The unmistakable wave of constitutional writing across the globe in the last decades has led to substantial academic debate over whether these newly promulgated constitutions, and their bills of right in particular, have made a difference in regard to states’ human rights practices (see Siegan, 1994; Finer et al., 1995; Ludwikowski, 1996). Sceptics have been particularly doubtful about European-rooted constitutionalism taking hold in non-European regions. Political scientists have begun to explore this important question empirically through systematic data collection and analysis. While the effects of constitutional provisions may be less than constitutional scholars would hope for, recent studies have found that some constitutional provisions do make a difference in human rights behaviour, and the studies have demonstrated that their collective impact is rather substantial (Davenport, 1996; Keith, 2002a, 2002b). Thus far, the analysis has not sought to answer the secondary question of whether constitutional provisions for human rights work consistently across all world regions. This question is linked to the ongoing normative debate of whether international human rights are universal or whether they are culturally limited products of Western individualism. For those of us who seek to find ways to improve human rights practices, the more important question is whether national constitutions are a viable path to achieve this goal in all countries or in only a limited set. This chapter seeks to empirically test this question. I examine the impact of three types of constitutional provisions on personal integrity rights: 1) provisions for specific individual freedoms; 2) provisions for an independent judiciary that are believed to be necessary for implementation of these constitutional protections; and 3) states of emergency provisions, which arguably will curb a regime’s proclivity toward human rights abuses.
