Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A comparative study

Schnelle, Tim Article — Published Version Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A comparative study Constitutional Political Economy Provided in Cooperation with: Springer Nature Suggested Citation: Schnelle, Tim (2024) : Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A comparative study, Constitutional Political Economy, ISSN 1572-9966, Springer US, New York, NY, Vol. 36, Iss. 3, pp. 376-399, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-024-09444-1 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/330599 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ORIGINAL PAPER Constitutional Political Economy (2025) 36:376–399 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-024-09444-1 Abstract It has often been claimed that if constitutions are not complied with, they will be changed. Because an ineffective constitutional contract is a bad contract, a lack of enforcement should induce constitutional reform. This paper empirically tests this conjecture based on a dataset of 170 countries from 1950 to 2018. The results indicate that the size of the de jure/de facto gap has no effect on the likelihood of constitutional change as such. However, after differentiating between amendments and replacements as distinct modes of constitutional reform, the results imply that non-compliance robustly increases the probability of constitutional replacement only. This relationship is primarily driven by an implementation gap regarding political and civil rights. Expected moderating effects of interpersonal trust and civil society organizations as catalysts for successful civil reform movements cannot be empirically supported. Overall, this has important consequences for the writers of future constitutions. If reformers desire longevity for their new constitutional framework, they must be aware that utopian promises may backfire by provoking a quick replacement of their rules. Keywords Constitutional change · Constitutional compliance · De jure-de facto gap · Collective action JEL classification H11 · H73 · K10 · K42 · O57 · P48 · P51 Accepted: 20 June 2024 / Published online: 25 July 2024 © The Author(s) 2024, corrected publication 2024 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A comparative study TimSchnelle1 Tim Schnelle [email protected] 1 University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany 1 3 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… 1 Introduction Durability is often considered to be a defining trait of constitutions (Raz, 1998). However, these documents are substantially shorter-lived than many would assume (Lorenz & Seemann, 2009). For instance, the Dominican Republic already lives under its 34th supreme law. In general, the average life expectancy of national constitutions is only 19 years (Elkins et al., 2009). Other constitutions – such as that of India, which is more than 70 years old – may exist for long periods of time but are amended so often that they basically establish a different legal system than that for which they initially laid the groundwork (Albert, 2019). But why do some constitutions remain substantially unchanged for decades while others are frequently amended or thrown out altogether? Few studies have quantitively analyzed this question and investigated the determinants of constitutional change on a large scale (Hayo & Voigt, 2010). Moreover, the existing research primarily emphasizes the effects of specific institutions (e.g. judicial review) or external events (e.g. armed conflicts) on constitutional reform (Negretto, 2017). This paper addresses this shortcoming by investigating a further determinant that may serve to induce constitutional change – namely, that of non-compliance.1 Constitutional compliance is itself a concept that only recently entered the scientific debate in comparative constitutional economics (Voigt, 2021). It is usually defined as the de jure/de facto gap between formal constitutional guarantees and their actual implementation (Gutmann et al., 2024; also see Law & Versteeg, 2013). Most of the existing empirical research on this topic analyzes factors conducive to compliance which is often justified in terms of economic prospects or human rights protection (Gutmann et al., 2021). However, non-compliance may also have significant political effects beyond that of poor rights enforcement. Most importantly, enforcement could be a necessary condition for – or at least a promotor of – constitutional stability (Ginsburg et al., 2009). As Dennis Mueller formulates it: “If it becomes apparent that it [the ideal of a self-enforcing contract] has not been achieved, [then] the citizens can exercise their ultimate sovereignty and rewrite the constitutional contract” (Mueller, 1996, p. 72–73). Similarly, Weingast (2006) states that if executives regularly transgress their legal boundaries, then constitutions will be changed. This paper aims to empirically test this established conjecture. The paper is structured in six sections. Following the introduction, the second section reviews the existing literature on constitutional change and compliance. Section three establishes the paper’s theoretical foundations, from which the hypotheses to be tested are derived. Section four describes the data and estimation approach, while the results of this analysis are presented in section five. Finally, section six concludes and derives possible implications for future constitution-makers. 1 The terms formal and written constitution are used interchangeably and define the de jure constitution of a country. Both constitutional change and compliance refer to the formal constitution only as this is the only reference point the two concepts can reasonably be applied to in an empirical analysis. Accordingly, throughout this paper “constitutional change” exclusively refers to changes made to the written text of a constitution. 1 3 377 T. Schnelle 2 Literature Review 2.1 Comparative constitutional change As of now, there is no empirical research explicitly connecting constitutional compliance and change. Hence, this section is divided into two separate overviews of the existing literature. The first presents analyses of constitutional change, replacement, and amendment. The second part summarizes the empirical literature on constitutional compliance. Arguably, the seminal contribution regarding the determinants of constitutional endurance is from Elkins et al. (2009). Distinguishing between design and environmental factors they find that inclusiveness, flexibility, and specificity lengthen constitutional life. External events only have a modest impact on the hazard of replacement. Some exceptions are neighboring constitutional events, regime transitions, and extra-constitutional leadership changes, all having a negative effect on a constitution’s longevity. Clearly inspired by this study, Negretto (2012) follows a similar empirical approach and focuses on one of the global “hotspots” of constitutional change, i.e. Latin America. Moreover, he is the first to systematically differentiate between replacements and amendments in a large-N study. He finds that replacements are more likely in the case of constitutional crises, if the rigidity of the document prevents change through amendment, and if the political system concentrates power in a small number of positions. The probability that an amendment will be adopted increases along with the length and detail of the constitutional text. Moreover, amendments become more likely if a low rigidity of amendment rules is paired with a low degree of party fragmentation. Hence, the choice between amendment and replacement is mainly a function of formal (in-)flexibility and the type of shock. While certain events call for a constitutional re-start, pressures caused by internal shifts of power are usually solved through amendment. In addition to Negretto’s study, constitutional amendments have received attention by a host of other scholars (Jensen et al., 2022; Lutz, 1994; Lorenz, 2005; Tsebelis, 2021). Most prominently, a plethora of studies has sought to develop a single quantitative index of constitutional rigidity (Anckar & Karvonen, 2002; Lijphart, 2012; Lutz, 1994; Tsebelis, 2021). Unfortunately, their results are mixed, and the proposed indices are rarely applicable outside the context for which they were developed (Lorenz, 2005). The only robustly confirmed determinant of amendment frequency is the length of the document (Ferejohn, 1997; Lutz, 1994; Tsebelis & Nardi, 2016). The incapability to empirically test and confirm a more complex theory of amendment led Albert (2019) to the conclusion that any effort to quantify amendment ease must necessarily fail. Nevertheless, two recent studies adventured new attempts from different directions. On the one hand, Tsebelis (2021) increased complexity by constructing an index based on veto-player theory. Available for 49 countries, this index not only incorporates all tracks of amendment but also the configuration of political parties. On the other hand, Ginsburg and Melton (2015) abandon the institutional approach altogether and argue that it is simply the “amendment culture” which is the fundamental driver of the actual amendment rate. Both studies find empirical support for their respective arguments, which further muddies the water. Overall, this persis1 3 378 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… tent heterogeneity in results suggests that Rasch’s (2003) twenty-year-old diagnosis is still correct – the empirical relationship between amendment ease and the actual rate of intra-constitutional change is indeed very tenuous. Focusing on changes to one specific formal institution, Hayo and Voigt (2010) study the form of government. Drawing from cross-sectional data of 169 countries they find that geographical factors and colonial history are central predictors for changes in the form of government. Moreover, they identify several variables including party competition, knowledge diffusion, armed conflicts, and the extent of democratization, that explain such shifts. In a follow-up paper the same authors find that the likelihood of a switch towards presidentialism is especially high when a leader dies of natural causes while in office or retires due to illness (Hayo & Voigt, 2013). 2.2 Constitutional compliance While the field of comparative constitutional change has received sizable attention over the last 20 years, systematic research on compliance with constitutional rules is still in its infancy (Voigt, 2021). This is surprising because few countries actually meet the high standards promised in their constitution while it is also known that de facto institutions matter more for the actual effects on e.g. economic output than the de jure text (Feld & Voigt, 2003; Voigt et al., 2015). The first paper thoroughly describing the gap between constitutional text and reality is from Law and Versteeg (2013), who cluster countries according to their constitutional comprehensiveness and rights implementation. While there are some democratic overperformers like Australia that effectively deliver more rights than they formally promise, the group of underperformers or “sham constitutions” exclusively counts non-democratic regimes. Since then, most of the literature has treated constitutional compliance as a dependent variable. Ginsburg et al. (2011) study the observance of constitutional term limits. They expect these rules to be more strenuously complied with than other provisions, because they define clear focal points which should be simple for the citizens to identify and therefore make public coordination against reneging political authorities easier. They find some evidence that term limits are indeed complied with more reliably than other procedural rules, at least in consolidated democracies. Yet, they also show that among those leaders reaching their formally defined term limit, more than 20% overstay. Following a similar rationale, a paper on constitutional budget constraints shows that transparency and monitoring increase their effectiveness (Blume & Voigt, 2013). Furthermore, several studies indicate that shock events like armed conflicts and successful coups decrease compliance (Choutagunta et al., 2024; Gutmann & Voigt, 2023; Metelska-Szaniawska, 2021). Yet another potential determinant of compliance studied by Gutmann et al. (2023) are the individual characteristics of political leaders. According to their analysis of 943 political leaders between 1950 and 2010, education, political experience, military background, the way of entry into office and membership in extreme left-wing parties all affect the de jure/de facto gap observed in their sample. In an attempt to identify possible safeguards against constitutional backsliding and protect countries from poor leadership, 1 3 379 T. Schnelle Gutmann and Voigt (2023) find that only few provisions can effectively deter leaders from reneging. According to their main model including 157 countries, the degree of respect for the constitution is largely determined by the regularity of entrance into government and the previous level of compliance. In another study, Gutmann et al. (2021) show that deeply entrenched cultural aspects correlate with the size of the constitutional implementation gap. In particular, more individualistic and less hierarchical societies tend to experience significantly higher levels of compliance. While it remains contested which specific institutions are most salient for facilitating compliance, two descriptive patterns seem to be well established. Firstly, democracy clearly has a positive effect on the overall level of compliance (e.g. Gutmann & Voigt, 2023; Metelska-Szaniawska, 2021). These findings square with the descriptive clustering by Law and Versteeg into overperforming democratic and sham authoritarian constitutions. Similarly, nation-statehood is positively related to constitutional compliance (Grajzl et al., 2024). Secondly, Chilton and Versteeg (2015) find that group rights are more likely to be implemented than individual rights. Their proposed explanation holds that in the case of constitutional violation, barriers for collective action are lower among already organized interest groups, thereby increasing the expected costs of non-compliance for executives. Given the diversity of studies mentioned above, it seems that we already have a rather sophisticated understanding of the determinants of the de jure/de facto gap with regard to constitutional rights (Voigt, 2021). However, little is known about the effects of constitutional compliance. While there are arguments connecting compliance with lower uncertainty regarding the expected behavior of political authorities which should lead to higher investment and better economic development (Gutmann et al., 2021; Voigt, 2021), the political effects of a widening de jure/de facto gap have not garnered significant attention. This paper attempts to shed some light on this empirical blind spot. 3 Theory 3.1 Non-compliance and reform Constitutional non-compliance is usually understood as the gap between text and reality (Voigt, 2021). Note, that compliance is thus not synonymous to the rule of law. Broadly understood, the latter principle demands that the same rules apply to all members of society. If, however, a constitution allows for unequal treatment of different genders, compliance can still be high, but rule of law would clearly be violated (Gutmann et al., 2021). Hence, compliance is a purely descriptive concept capturing the de jure/de facto gap at the constitutional level. The idea of linking compliance to constitutional stability (as opposed to constitutional change) is not novel but has been an implicit assumption in many theoretical debates. For instance, Weingast (2005) notes that constitutions fail where politicians fall short of the promises made in the constitution and violate citizens’ rights. Consequently, constitutions are likely to be changed unless they effectively deter the executive from transgressing the law. Similarly, it has been argued that some constitutions 1 3 380 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… live longer than others because they are self-stabilizing in that they “create incentives for all relevant actors to abide by the rules” (Jacobi et al., 2015, p. 601). One way to rationalize these conjectures is to apply the compliance framework developed by Voigt (2021). In this cost-benefit model, compliance is a function of the incentives faced by an executive. The incentive structure is determined by the presence of veto players (legislature, courts etc.), the national public and foreign actors. When making decisions, executives weigh the benefits and costs of non-compliance – considerations that are shaped by contextual factors and, critically, by constitutional design. Hence, a large gap between constitutional text and de facto implementation indicates that the current provisions impose insufficient costs on a reneging government. The intuitive response to this issue would be to sharpen those provisions by rewriting the constitution (see Mueller, 1996; Weingast, 2006).2 Conversely, one might argue that non-compliance as such need not induce constitutional change. First, constitutional reform can be a very difficult task. The recent history of Chile shows that even when there is widespread agreement on the need for change, dispute over its substance can still prevent success. While in a plebiscite in October 2020 a vast majority (78%) of Chilean voters agreed to replace the 1980 Pinochet constitution, the first draft was rejected by 62% of the people in a referendum in 2022 (Larrain et al., 2023). Second, if the relevant actors are able to agree on a different implicit set of rules or a critical group benefits from a reneging government, there is room for an “equilibrium” with low compliance and no constitutional change. This argument may be explicitly relevant for authoritarian regimes, where constitutions are primarily used as tools of “window-dressing” vis-à-vis the international community while the actual rules of the political game are implicit (Ginsburg, 2020a; Ginsburg & Simpser, 2014). Third, compliance is only partially a consequence of “bad government”. The previously cited literature suggests that many contextual factors like colonial origin, conflicts, and culture affect the compliance level. Moreover, constitutions may simply become outdated due to social changes within society. In these cases, non-compliance could be a popularly supported alternative for constitutional change. If amendment rules are too rigid and replacement is no feasible option for symbolic reasons, non-compliance may be a substitute for constitutional change rather than a determinant thereof (Huq & Ginsburg, 2018). Despite these concerns, there is something to the idea of connecting formal constitutional change with a lack of law enforcement – even if the link between non-compliance and reform may not be as direct as suggested and involve multiple mechanisms. Additionally, Congleton (2011) already found some qualitative evidence among Western democracies for an evolutionary tendency toward efficient Constitutionalism where poor design choices of the past have subsequently been replaced. There 2 To reach a higher level of compliance, reformers could also simply remove those constitutional promises that are not complied with. Obviously, this is not the intention behind the argument. Citizens have a substantive interest in rights protection. They will therefore not simply give up on formalized rights for the sake of a better compliance score. To alleviate concerns that it is actually the removal of rights from the constitution that narrows the de jure/de facto gap, I checked how constitutional changes affected 14 basic rights potentially covered by a constitution. Of the 2056 changes (amendments and replacements) in the sample, only 2.3% reduced the number of formalized rights. 1 3 381 T. Schnelle seems to be no prima facie reason why this finding should not extend to other countries as well. Hence, the first hypothesis states: H1 Non-compliance increases the probability of constitutional change. 3.2 Replacements versus amendments Replacements and amendments have often been understood as substitutes for each other (Burgess, 1890; Ginsburg, 2020b). In line with this tradition, the first hypothesis treats any form of constitutional change alike. However, this simplification may be inappropriate in the given context. Instead, predictions should distinguish between the two standard modes of constitutional reform – amendment and replacement. Albert (2019) highlights three ways to differentiate the two: a proceduralist, a textual and a content-based approach. According to the first definition, changes are called amendments if the actors claim to have followed the formal amendment rules, and replacements otherwise. The textual approach understands any change within the same codified document as an amendment, while all other changes are replacements. Finally, the content-based definition considers whether a formal change preserved legal continuity. If the new provisions run counter to the ideas and spirit of the former constitution, this counts as a discontinuity in a country’s legal history and should therefore be considered as a replacement even if reformers have followed the official amendment rules (Albert, 2019). The latter approach might theoretically be the most precise one, but is impractical for large-N analyses. The textual approach, however, has been rejected for being overly simplistic (Levinson, 1995, p. 25). Therefore, I follow the standard literature and opt for the procedural definition of amendments and replacements (see Elkins et al., 2009). The idea to distinguish between amendments and replacements is based on two arguments. First, they send different signals and differ in scope. Amendments try to preserve continuity and usually only make fine adjustments, while replacements highlight the beginning of something new and signal a political re-start (Negretto, 2012). Non-compliance means that a constitution fails to deliver on what has been promised to the people. Symbolically stressing continuity under the impression of failure and making minor adaptations only is unlikely to calm the public. Moreover, as the most basic law, constitutions lack any external mechanisms for their implementation – a problem Ordeshook (1992, p.137) coined as the “mystery of enforcement”. Hence, every constitution at least partially relies on its perceived legitimacy to exert influence on the behavior of actors. Replacement appears to be a more suitable tool to reestablish these values, as it allows political decision-makers to leave the ignominious past behind. Second, the actors involved in amendment procedures are usually not the ones suffering most from non-compliance, i.e. the citizens.3 According to data from the Comparative Constitutions Project led by Elkins and Ginsburg 3 Citizens will especially suffer from non-compliance where constitutional rights are considered. Therefore, the discussion is mostly concerned with “substantive compliance” with the rights section as opposed to “procedural compliance” with the rules of decision-making. 1 3 382 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… (2022), only about 10% of constitutions allow citizens themselves to propose amendments.4 At the same time, those capable of amending the constitution (especially the executive) benefit from the currently loose incentive structure. In sum, those objecting to substantive non-compliance lack the tools for amendment, while those capable of internal reform lack the interest to pursue it. Institutional optimization aiming at better rights enforcement from within a constitutional system thus seems unlikely. Instead, the people must exercise their constituent power as the ultimate sovereign to get rid of their “sham constitution” (Law & Versteeg, 2013).5 The following hypotheses take up on these points: H2 Non-compliance increases the probability of replacement. H3 Non-compliance has no effect of the probability of amendment.6 3.3 Constitutional change and collective action Starting with H2, this holds that replacements should only happen if citizens can credibly threaten to exercise their revolutionary power. This will only be the case where they can overcome the collective action problem (Olson, 1965; Weingast, 1997). Since nobody can be excluded from the benefits of an improved constitution, citizens have little reason to join costly protests or contribute to the drafting process if others are willing to do so on their behalf (see Goldstone, 1994). Moreover, citizens will only participate and invest in opposition if they expect many others to do the same because otherwise the success probability and expected returns are insufficiently high. Thus, a second problem is the uncertainty about the actions of fellow citizens (Hadfield & Weingast, 2014). Incorporating collective action into the theory therefore implies that the link between non-compliance and replacement should be moderated by factors which help to reduce uncertainty between citizens and mitigate the temptation of free-riding. One such catalyst for collective action are civil society organizations (CSO), which reduce incentives for free-riding by splitting the decision-making process of joining the reform movement into two stages. In the first stage, citizens decide to join a CSO. In the second stage, CSOs must coordinate to organize joint protests. As the number of actors at both stages is relatively small, free-riders can be punished more easily. As a consequence, the threat of revolution is more credible the more CSOs exist in a country (Goldstone, 1994). 4 On the other hand, since 1950 citizens have been directly involved in constitutional replacement through popular referendum in about 35% of the cases considered (Ginsburg et al., 2009). 5 Since the people draw their power as ultimate sovereign from the threat of revolution which is common to both autocracies and democracies, it is not necessary to distinguish between regime types in the analysis. 6 The statement of H3 follows from the theoretical argument. As one of the anonymous reviewers pointed out correctly, this is econometrically not correct and should read “non-compliance has a positive effect on amendments” to be testable by standard statistical significance tests. However, this would confuse the reader because it states the contrary of the theory. I thank the reviewer for pointing this out. 1 3 383 T. Schnelle contextual factors of a polity into account, so its strong positive effect is no surprise. The absence of significant main effects in Columns (5) and (6) also explain why H1 had to be rejected: As around 90% of all constitutional changes in the sample are amendments, the regression results in Columns (1) and (2) are largely driven by these intra-constitutional changes. Thus, distinguishing between amendments and replacements was indeed necessary to disentangle the different implications of compliance on types of constitutional change. 5.2 Replacement and collective action Hypotheses H4 and H5 are tested by adding interaction terms of non-compliance and the respective moderators to the model as specified in Eq. (1). For marginal effects to estimable for the time-invariant trust index, the second model uses random-effects (RE) rather than fixed-effects (FE). Notably, the coefficients are structurally similar in the REand the FE-model, so resorting to RE does not systematically affect the estimation. The estimation results are displayed in Fig. 1 as plotted marginal effects of non-compliance at given levels of CSO and trust, respectively. As indicated by Fig. 1(a) and the corresponding regression Table A2 (in the appendix), the marginal effect of non-compliance on the replacement probability slightly decreases with the CSO index. Nevertheless, the interaction effect is not significantly different from zero and H4 must be rejected. Almost identical results are observed with respect to the moderating influence of trust. Initially, the negative slope in Fig. 1(b) seems to suggest that non-compliance may in fact matter more in low trust societies. This would contradict the theory which posited that replacement risk will be higher under a non-compliant government in high-trust countries. However, the interaction term in column (3) of Table A2 is again insignificant. Hence, the graphical evidence of non-compliance being more effective in low trust countries is only tentative and should not be overstated. Consequently, H5 is also rejected. Fig. 1 Marginal effects of compliance on replacement for given levels of the CSO and trust index Note Graphs plot the estimated margins with 75% confidence intervals for non-compliance at given levels of CSO and trust. Estimations based OLS regression with country-clustered standard errors; estimation results of the regressions are displayed in columns (2) and (3) of Table A2. All figures were created using STATA 1 3 390 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… 5.3 Model extension – disaggregating compliance The main model’s non-compliance index is a catch-all measure which does not differentiate between the affected rights areas. However, there are reasons to believe that certain rights violations are considered to be a more severe breach of the rules than others. For instance, the enforcement of property rights might be crucial for a stable constitutional system as property owners tend to be more politically active and influential (Echeverria, 1997; Yoder, 2020). If these powerful actors are affected by a de jure/de facto gap, this may pose a greater risk of instability than the political suppression of a weak or poorly organized marginalized group. Alternatively, noncompliance might be more difficult to agree on in some areas because the precise meaning of certain rights is more contested and less transparent. This in turn should contribute to the collective action problem and reduce the likelihood of successful reform movements (see Ginsburg et al., 2011; Hadfield & Weingast, 2014). To shed some light on these conjectures, I re-ran the regressions using the four sub-indices of the main compliance index provided by Gutmann et al. (2024). The political rights sub-index (cc_polit) quantifies compliance with the freedom of association, assembly and the right to form parties. Basic freedoms such as the right to life and the prohibition of slavery and torture are considered by cc_basic. The property rights and rule of law score (cc_prop) reflects private property rights, judicial independence, equality before the law and the rule of law itself. Finally, the civil rights measure (cc_civil) covers free media, speech and movement, as well as religious freedom (Gutmann et al., 2024). The correlation between the four indices lies between 0.6 and 0.8. The estimation approach is identical to the main model. Compliance variables are again recoded into a measure of non-compliance (i.e. multiplied with − 1) to ease interpretation. Results are reported in Table 3. The coefficients reported in Table 3 suggest that the link between non-compliance and replacements found in the main model is primarily driven by a de jure/de facto gap in terms of political and civil rights. Both results are remarkable, as the two subindices cover exactly those rights that seem to be preconditions for successful popular reform movements. If the freedom of association (political liberty) and media freedom (civil liberty) are suppressed, coordination among citizens to pressure for institutional change should be especially difficult. Still, these are the factors which make extra-constitutional reform through replacement more rather than less likely. 6 Conclusion Many authors have claimed that constitutions will be changed if they are ineffective (Jacobi et al., 2015; Mueller, 1996; Weingast, 2005, 2006). This paper tests this claim on a large sample of 170 countries over almost 70 years. Although the empirical strategy does not allow for making strong causal claims, it does shed some light on the validity of the hypotheses. Constitutional change as such is not more likely if the gap between de jure and de facto is large. However, a lack of rights enforcement robustly increases the probability of constitutional replacement. This effect is moderated by social trust which enables citizens to coordinate better and pressure for reform. More1 3 391 T. Schnelle over, by disaggregating the compliance measure it is possible to identify implementation gaps regarding political and civil rights as the most important drivers of the effect. Therefore, the results overall support the hypothesis that a lack of compliance with constitutional rights has the potential to destabilize constitutional systems and increase the risk of their replacement. Given the increasing value attributed to constitutional continuity this has important implications for constitution-writers (see Oliver & Fusaro, 2011). If they assign an inherent value to constitutional stability and want their institutional framework to remain durable, reformers should be careful with granting rights that cannot be enforced or implemented. This especially concerns positive rights such as the right to receive an education, which many countries in the developing world simply cannot provide due to limited financial resources. This study shows that such implementation gaps increase the risk of replacement, which is often a fraught affair with unpre- (1) replace (2) replace (3) replace (4) replace (5) replace noncompliance polit 0.007* 0.004 (0.004) (0.005) noncompliance basic 0.005 0.001 (0.003) (0.004) noncompliance prop 0.002 -0.004 (0.003) (0.004) noncompliance civil 0.009** 0.007 (0.004) (0.006) flexibility -0.009 -0.008 -0.008 -0.008 -0.009 (0.015) (0.015) (0.015) (0.015) (0.015) age_log 0.019*** 0.019*** 0.019*** 0.019*** 0.019*** (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) dtrans 0.059* 0.060* 0.060* 0.059* 0.059* (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) atrans 0.099** 0.099** 0.099** 0.100** 0.100** (0.048) (0.048) (0.048) (0.048) (0.048) conflict 0.012 0.011 0.012 0.011 0.011 (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) (0.008) contagion 0.041 0.041 0.042 0.045 0.043 (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) (0.031) Observations 7927 7927 7927 7927 7927 No. of Countries 167 167 167 167 167 R20.031 0.031 0.031 0.032 0.032 Table 3 Disaggregated noncompliance and constitutional replacement Fixed-effects OLS regression coefficients with countryclustered standard errors in parentheses; dependent variable as indicated in column header; all non-compliance variables, flexibility, and age_ log are lagged by one period; observations are country-years; *: 0.1, **: 0.05, ***: 0.01 1 3 392 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… dictable outcomes (Elster, 1995, 2000, 2018). Still, one might argue that reformers should favor making changes to their constitutions if doing so is likely to improve the quality of their implementation. However, one of the defining traits of replacements is that they place everything back on the table while amendments only question and change single provisions (Albert, 2019). Reformers could thus favor optimizing amendments but may not want to push their luck and risk a wholesale rework of their institutional design. Constitution-writers should thus be aware that making many utopian promises may backfire by provoking a quick replacement. Appendix See Tables A1, A2 and A3. Table A1 Main model using the V-Dem compliance index (1) conchange (2) replace (3) amend non-compliance V-Dem 0.004 0.013*** -0.008 (0.008) (0.004) (0.008) flexibility 0.207*** -0.008 0.215*** (0.056) (0.015) (0.052) age_log 0.018** 0.018*** 0.000 (0.009) (0.003) (0.008) dtrans 0.053 0.058* -0.005 (0.051) (0.031) (0.043) atrans 0.074 0.100** -0.026 (0.074) (0.048) (0.047) conflict -0.003 0.011 -0.015 (0.018) (0.008) (0.019) contagion 0.073 0.056* 0.017 (0.070) (0.032) (0.070) Observations 8106 8106 8106 No. of Countries 170 170 170 Within R20.021 0.032 0.018 Fixed-effects OLS regression coefficients with country-clustered standard errors in parentheses; models (1) uses conchange, model (3) uses replace and model (5) uses amend as the dependent variable; variables non-compliance V-Dem, flexibility, and age_log are lagged by one period; observations are country-years; *: 0.1, **: 0.05, ***: 0.01 1 3 393 T. Schnelle Table A2 CSOs and trust as potential moderators (1) replace (2) replace (3) replace non-compliance 0.008** 0.006 0.010** (0.004) (0.013) (0.004) CSO -0.024 (0.022) non-compliance*CSO -0.006 (0.016) trust -0.043 (0.029) non-compliance*trust -0.016 (0.024) flexibility -0.008 -0.008 -0.001 (0.015) (0.016) (0.009) age_log 0.019*** 0.019*** -0.000 (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) dtrans 0.060* 0.059* 0.080* (0.031) (0.031) (0.044) atrans 0.099** 0.102** 0.176** (0.048) (0.048) (0.076) conflict 0.011 0.012 -0.003 (0.008) (0.008) (0.005) contagion 0.052 0.053* 0.041 (0.031) (0.032) (0.034) Observations 8106 8100 4353 No. of Countries 170 170 87 R20.031 0.031 0.046 OLS regression coefficients with country-clustered standard errors in parentheses; model (1) and (2) use fixed-effects, model (3) uses random-effects; the dependent variable in all models is replace; model (1) is the baseline model as in Eq. (1); model (2) additionally interacts non-compliance with CSO; model (3) additionally interacts non-compliance with trust; variables non-compliance, CSO, flexibility, and age_log are lagged by one period; observations are country-years; *: 0.1, **: 0.05, ***: 0.01 1 3 394 Non-compliance as a determinant of constitutional change? A… Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi. org/10.1007/s10602-024-09444-1. Acknowledgements I am thankful to Stefan Voigt, Vera Troeger and Dylan Johnson for comments on previous drafts of this paper. Additionally, I thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on my theoretical and empirical sections. Table A3 Variables, coding and sources Variable Coding Source age_log Logarithm of the number of years a constitutional system has been in place Elkins and Ginsburg (2022) amend Dummy variable coded 1 if there was an amendment in that year, 0 otherwise Elkins and Ginsburg (2022) atrans Dummy variable coded 1 if there was a switch to autocracy; 0 otherwise Bjørnskov and Rode (2020) conchange Dummy variable coded 1 if a new or interim constitution is promulgated, 0 otherwise Elkins and Ginsburg (2022) conflict Dummy variable coded 1 if there was an armed conflict involving the government of the respective country with more than 25 battle-related deaths in a given year; generated from variables “intensity_level”, “year” and “location” in UCDP/ PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset 22.1 UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset 22.1; Gleditsch et al. (2002) contagion Share of countries within the same region which experienced constitutional failure in that year (the observed country itself excluded) Elkins and Ginsburg (2022) and regional classification by Teorell and Hadenius (2005) CSO Core civil society index from the Varieties of Democracy Project (v2xcs_ccsi) V-Dem Dataset Version 13; Coppedge et al. (2023) dtrans Dummy variable coded 1 if there was a switch to democracy; 0 otherwise Bjørnskov and Rode (2020) flexibility Number of amendments divided by the number of years a constitutional system has been in place Elkins and Ginsburg (2022) non-compliance Total compliance score from the Comparative Constitutional Compliance Database cc_total∗−1 Gutmann et al. (2024) non-compliance basic Compliance sub-index in the area of basic rights cc_basic∗−1 Gutmann et al. (2024) non-compliance civil Compliance sub-index in the area of civil rights cc_civil∗−1 Gutmann et al. (2024) non-compliance L&V Alternative compliance score from the CCCP using the aggregation formula from Law and Versteeg (2013) cc_total_lv ∗−1 Gutmann et al. (2024) non-compliance polit Compliance sub-index in the area of political rights cc_polit∗−1 Gutmann et al. (2024) non-compliance prop Compliance sub-index in the area of property rights and the rule of law cc_prop ∗−1 Gutmann et al. (2024) non-compliance V-Dem Compliance index from the Varieties of Democracy Project v2exrescon ∗−1 V-Dem Dataset Version 10; Coppedge et al. (2023) trust Product of trustlevel (respondents answering “Most people can be trusted”) and trustradius (as estimated in Delhey et al. (2011) World Values Survey Waves 1–7; Haerpfer et al. (2022) 1 3 395 T. Schnelle Author contributions T. Schnelle was the principal author of this paper. Funding This research project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) GRK 2503. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. References Albert, R. (2019). 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