South Africa's Experience in Constitution-Building
This chapter draws on a brief history of the constitution-making process in South Africa to highlight five particular aspects of constitution-building. Noting that the process of constitution-making has become a key element in political transitions and post-conflict settlements in the post-cold war era, it is argued that the process of building a constitutional democracy encompasses a far broader range of issues than the drafting and adoption of a new constitution. The chapter identifies and discusses five sources of variation in constitution-building processes that impact the different issues enabling the building of a constitutional democracy. First, there is a temporal dimension, which may be characterised as being both macro and micro in scope, in that the general historic timing of a democratic transition as well as the specific time-frames within the process of constitution-making, all have clear consequences for the choices available to the parties. Second, there is a question of process in which the specific process of constitution-building, chosen from a range of historic options, is deployed by the parties to achieve specific advantages over their opponents but can also serve as a means to ensure that the political transition proceeds. Third, participation in the constitution-building process is an aspect that is important both for those who are active in the actual constitution-making process as well as the broader society that is called upon to accept and legitimate the constitutional product as the basis of a future social compact. Fourth, the recognition and use of constitutional principles is an important element of constitution-building in this era. Finally, the substantive choices inherent in a constitution-building process involve alternative institutional designs and substantive elements of the constitution, all of which have a significant impact on the overall process of constitution-building.
Introduction: Peace and constitution making in emerging South Sudan on and beyond the negotiation tables
By way of introduction to this special collection, this article addresses the question: Does the ‘emerging’ state South Sudan need a ‘permanent’ constitution, especially in light of the ongoing negotiations on the mode of statehood? We shed light on the resulting dilemma between the hasty production of a ‘permanent’ constitution and the idea of deriving its authority from the will of the people, implying the existence of a certain societal consensus. An analysis of a peace conference over land tenure clearly demonstrates that regional and national consensuses on issues to be inscribed in a ‘permanent’ constitution could not be reached. During this conference, a ‘processual solution’ permitted not only for the continuation of negotiations, but also for the integration of all involved actors. By contrast, the de jure makings of both the Transitional Constitution which currently serves as the preliminary normative frame of the new state, and the upcoming ‘permanent’ constitution show that many actors are ousted from the decision-making process. Furthermore, actors on, off, and beyond the constitution-making table negotiate within the normative frames of international actors, even if these frames and the mode of statehood are still under negotiation. The current political and military re-negotiations can be seen as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the constitution-making endeavour. The paper argues that a slowing down of the constitution making and a ‘processual solution’ to the dilemma – without an immediate claim to consent on substance – seems to be a more appropriate ‘solution’.
ASSESSING AGE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEIVED RISK AND FEAR OF CRIME
Much of the research on fear of crime indicates that women and older persons are highly afraid of crime. These findings, especially older persons' fear of crime, are widely communicated in the scientific and popular media. This study examines age and gender differences in perceived risk and fear of crime. The data are from telephone interviews of 320 randomly selected residents in a southeastern metropolitan area of the United States. The relationships of age and gender to fear of crime are compared using a National Crime Survey (NCS) measure of fear of crime and 11 alternative indicators of fear of specific offenses. Women reported signifcantly greater perceived risk and fear of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured and older adults reported the greatest fear of crime when the NCS measure was used. but not when the alternative individual measures of fear of crime were used. A LISREL model with latent constructs for fear of personal crime and fear of property crime also indicates that older adults do not have higher levels of fear of crime. In short, the extent of fear in the everyday lives of most older persons has been overestimated in many previous studies because of measurement problems.