How constitutions are made : external actor involvement in constitutional drafting during democratic transitions

The central motivation of this project is to contribute to a better understanding of the transnational dimension of constitution-making in the context of democratic transition, by addressing the concrete involvement of external actors. Grounded in a law and society approach, and informed by New Legal Realism, this dissertation develops an alternative theoretical framework, the ‘development enterprise’, to examine the involvement of external actors during an under-studied phase of constitution-making, constitutional drafting, thus providing a more complete picture of how constitution-making unfolds on the ground. The analytical lens reveals a broader range of external actors, while exposing the continuity between decolonial and post-Cold War constitution-making, and emphasising the figure of the expert. This dissertation undertakes a case study of the making of the 2014 Tunisian Constitution, which serves to illustrate the political dimension of constitutional expertise, detailing the channels through which expertise is provided, and highlighting the fact that informal modes of action are a significant feature of transnational constitution-making. In addition to the theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to the literature on comparative constitutional law, this empirically-driven study also aims to inform future constitution-makers by drawing attention to the transnational dimension of constitution-making and the many avenues through which external actor involvement takes place.