Constitutions survive on unwritten norms: accepting rivals as legitimate, and declining to use every power the rules technically allow.
Levitsky and Ziblatt's 2018 argument. Their point is that these norms are not in any constitution and cannot be enforced by one, so a constitution can be followed to the letter while being hollowed out.
In practice
- A losing party concedes and a governing party leaves a legal power unused, and neither is written down anywhere.
- A committee chair who could ram through a decision with a casting vote does not, and the restraint is what makes the next meeting possible.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works