American Journal of Political Science
Public participation and constitutional compliance
2025-07-25
Many constitutions are ratified by referendum, and public participation in earlier stages of constitution‐making is increasingly common. Participation may increase the perceived legitimacy of a constitution and citizens' knowledge about it. If this is true, one expects participation to lead to greater constitutional compliance. We explore this hypothesis using data on public participation in constitution‐making and compliance. Employing matching methods, we find little evidence of a positive effect of participation on compliance generally. However, there is compelling evidence of a positive effect on provisions specific to property rights and the rule of law.