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Al-Ali, Zaid --- "Constitutional Drafting and External Influence" [2011] ELECD 365; in Ginsburg, Tom; Dixon, Rosalind (eds), "Comparative Constitutional Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Comparative Constitutional Law

Editor(s): Ginsburg, Tom; Dixon, Rosalind

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848445390

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Constitutional Drafting and External Influence

Author(s): Al-Ali, Zaid

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

5. Constitutional drafting and external influence
Zaid Al-Ali



1 INTRODUCTION
External influence on a constitution-making process can be exercised actively through the
direct intervention of an external actor, or passively through the impact of a series of norms
or rules. A wide range of actors can be involved, including multilateral organizations such as
the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, individual states,
civil society organizations (including well-established state-funded political organizations
such as the German stiftungen) and individual scholars or advisers who are commissioned by
participants in the constitution-making process itself to provide advice on specific issues.
Recent experience indicates that external actors are almost always motivated by a desire to
ensure the protection of fundamental rights and adherence to international best practice in the
constitution's final draft. Although this necessarily means that they seek to influence the
drafting process towards a certain outcome, many observers would probably agree that this
type of influence has on the whole been enormously useful in the development of constitu-
tional law in countless countries in recent decades. Importantly, however, recent experience
also shows that different categories of external actor behave according to separate standards
of behavior, sometimes to the extent that external influence can skew constitution-making
processes in favor of undesirable outcomes.
By virtue of the generally accepted principle that nations do not interfere in each other's
internal affairs, states tend not to intervene directly in the constitution-making process of
other ...