Explaining constitutional change: making sense of cross-national variation among European Union member states

ABSTRACT

This study examines how European Union member states have undertaken constitutional change to adjust to the new conditions that follow from membership in this supranational organization. The article seeks to explain what factors determine why constitutional reform induced by EU membership is sometimes brought about by changing the wording of the constitutional document (explicit change), and sometimes by changing the meaning of the constitution while leaving the constitutional text itself unaltered (implicit change). The current study provides new insights regarding constitutional change by formulating and testing a number of rival hypotheses about what explains cross-national variation in the use of different methods for achieving constitutional reform. The results show that three factors stand out as important determinants for EU-induced constitutional change: constitutional rigidity; public opinion; and the number of cabinet parties.

KEY WORDS:

• Constitutional change
• constitutional reform
• explicit constitutional change
• implicit constitutional change
• European Union

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences under Grant P09-0692:1-E. The author is grateful to Susanne Vinell, Karin Leijon and Katarina Galic for providing excellent research assistance, as well as to the JEPP referees for their suggestions.

Notes

1 Since the United Kingdom lacks a written constitution, it has been excluded from the current study.

2 There may be different reasons as to why this type of implicit change that goes to modify the meaning of the constitution comes into existence. In the current case all affected parties have realized that it can be counterproductive to bind the government's hand, since this will threaten to diminish Austria's influence during EU negotiations. However, a thorough examination of the reasons for why we see this type of constitutional change falls outside the scope of the current study.

3 The index scores are (a + b + c – 2): (a) the number of decisions required: 1 = one decision; 2 = more than one decision; (b) majority requirements: 1 = more than 50 per cent less than two-thirds; 2 = at least two-thirds but less than three-quarters; 3 = at least three-quarters; (c) number of actors involved in decision: 1 = one; 2 = 2; 3 = more than 2.

4 The Eurobarometer Series, available at http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion (accessed December 2014).

5 Due to the complete lack of variation, the variable ‘the judiciary's competencies' was excluded from any further analysis. Before conducting the principal component analysis the data were screened for univariate and bivariate outliers using a Mahalanobis test. The observations for Austria and Hungary were close to being outliers, but passed the test.

6 In a bivariate regression, ‘public opinion’ (–0.83) alone explained 20.9 per cent of the variance in constitutional change.

7 In a bivariate regression, ‘cabinet parties’ (–0.36) alone explained 14.1 per cent of the variance in constitutional change.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christer Karlsson

Biographical note

Christer Karlsson is associate professor of political science at Uppsala University.