ABSTRACT
Constitution is a design of governance. It is a design that draws on chosen ideational principles which receive endorsement presumably because they help the Constitution to articulate and also translate them into practice. The idea is very simple: Constitution is based on certain fundamental principles, those principles which are critical in shaping a specific kind of governance. An example will suffice here. Broadly speaking, in so far as constitutional principles are concerned, there are two major politico-ideological perspectives: one is derived from liberal constitutionalism, and the other is drawn on the Marxist ideological paradigm. The 1977 Constitution of the erstwhile Soviet Union had its ideological roots in Marxism-Leninism, which means that it was modelled after the politico-ideological format of governance that the latter had preferred. So, in terms of its identity, it was Marxist-Leninist in character and also texture. In a similar vein, the 1789 US Constitution has a clear liberal imprint since it draws its ideological sustenance from the fundamental ideational principles of the philosophy of Enlightenment upholding toleration, compassion and empathy. Accepting individual as the focal point of the polity, liberal constitutionalism privileges the former, while the Marxist-Leninist design of constitutional governance cares more for the collectivity of the majority, proletariat in its ideological lexicon. Implicit here is the argument that for conceptualizing constitutional identity, one needs to be attentive to the ideological foundation of a Constitution for it lays out not only the structure of governance but also its vocabulary. What is thus argued here is the point that constitutional identity is intrinsically ideological since it is derivative of the core social, economic and political values, which are critical to its articulation in a particular fashion.
