Friday, January 24th, 2020 Territory and Power in Constitutional Transitions

Description

This is a book panel on George Anderson & Sujit Choudhry’s recently published edited volume, Territory and Power in Constitutional Transitions (Oxford University Press, 2019). This edited volume, and an accompanying policy paper, are the major outputs of the “Territory and Power” project, a 5-year, thematic, collaborative, global research initiative led by the Center for Constitutional Transitions, the Forum of Federations, and International IDEA, that brought together 24 experts from 13 countries. The research question is how territorial claims relate to constitution-making processes and constitutional design during periods of intense political engagement over constitutional reform or “constitutional moments”. The book includes 17 case studies. Anderson & Choudhry will present the main findings of Territory and Power, followed by commentary by Jacques Bertrand & Lucan Way, who were in participants in this project and contributed chapters.

Sujit Choudhry (WZB Berlin Social Science Research Centre) is one of the world’s leading scholars of comparative constitutional law. His edited volumes include The Migration of Constitutional Ideas (CUP), Constitutional Design for Divided Societies (OUP), the Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution (OUP), Territory and Power in Constitutional Transitions(OUP), and Security Sector Reform in Constitutional Transitions (OUP). He is currently working on the public law theory of political parties. He has advised constitutional processes in Cyprus, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Myanmar, Nepal, South Africa, Tunisia, Ukraine and Yemen.

George Anderson has been a federal deputy minister, president of the Forum of Federations, and member of the UN’s stand-by team of mediation experts. He is a fellow at Queen’s University’s Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity. In addition to his extensive work internationally, he is author of the widely translated Federalism: An Introduction and Fiscal Federallsim: A Comparative Introduction, as well as editor of volumes on oil and gas, water, and internal markets in federal systems.

Lucan Ahmad Way is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (2015) and co-author of Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (2010). Together with Steven Levitsky, he is completing a book on the durability of autocracies founded in violent social revolution.

Jacques Bertrand is Professor and Associate Chair (Graduate) of Political Science, as well as Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies and Director of the Collaborative Master’s Program in Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies (Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs) at the University of Toronto. He is the author/co- editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia (Cambridge, 2004); Multination States in Asia: Accommodation or Resistance (Cambridge, 2010); Political Change in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2013); and Democratization and Ethnic Minorities: Conflict or Compromise? (Routledge, 2014). He is finalizing a book manuscript on Democracy and Secessionist Conflict in Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP)and a book (w/ Ardeth Thawnghmung and Alexandre Pelletier) entitled Winning by Process: The State, Democratic Transition, and Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar.

Filiz Kahraman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and an affiliate faculty member at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies of the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Her research investigates law and politics from international and comparative perspectives. She is currently working on a book manuscript examining why labor activists in Europe pursue human rights law as a new mobilization strategy and how international law has affected the lives of aggrieved workers on the ground.