Constituent assemblies / edited by Jon Elster, Roberto Gargarella, Vatsal Naresh, Bjørn Erik Rasch.

Constitution-making in the context of plural societies : the "accumulation strategy" / Roberto Gargarella -- Constituent assemblies in democratic regimes : the problem of a legally limited convention / Gabriel L. Negretto -- Constituent assemblies and political continuity in divided societies / Hanna Lerner -- Constituent assembly failure in Pakistan and Nepal / Mara Malagodi -- Precautions in a democratic experiment : the nexus between political power and competence / Udit Bhatia -- A race against time : the making of the Norwegian constitution of 1814 / Jon Elster -- Chain of legitimacy : constitution making in Iceland / Thorvaldur Gylfason -- Constitution making and legislative involvement in government formation / Cristina Bucur, José Antonio Cheibub, Shane Martin and Bjørn Erik Rasch -- The political psychology of constitution making / Jon Elster.

This volume exemplifies the large comparative scope of current research in constituent assemblies . The contributors discuss constituent assemblies in South East Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, and in Nordic countries. Among the new insights they provide is a better understanding of how constituent assemblies may fail, either by not producing a document at all or by adopting a constitution that fails to serve as a neutral framework for ordinary politics. In a theoretical afterword, Jon Elster, an inspirational thinker on the current topic, offers an analysis of the micro-foundations of constitution-making, with special emphasis on the role of crises-generated passion.