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On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared the outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) to be a pandemic. In decision-making during health crises, individuals must trust the information they receive from the government. Because Israel was in the midst of a deep constitutional crisis, the challenges it faced in managing the COVID-19 crisis differed from those experienced by other countries. The spread of COVID-19 endangered public health, undermined economic and social resilience, challenged effective governance, and even provided cover for processes that could potentially harm democratic values. The aim of this chapter is to analyse Israeli policy-makers’ health and risk communication efforts during the COVID-19 first wave and the early stages of the second wave. The chapter first describes the COVID-19 narrative in Israel and discusses the different strategies used by the Israeli government to communicate the health guidelines to the public, among them fear appeals, use of military-style language, and mixed messages. It then discusses public trust in times of pandemics and draws conclusions about the Israeli government’s health and risk communication efforts, before making recommendations for building and strengthening trust between the government and the public in future pandemics.

The Catalan secessionist crisis represents the most serious threat to the Spanish constitutional order since Franco’s dictatorship ended. This chapter explores three dimensions of a possible response to the challenge of the Catalan secessionist movement: the discourse employed, the means used to deploy it and the envisaged result. All of these are articulated considering the relationship between the Catalan secessionist imaginary and constitutionalism. The chapter reveals the degree to which Catalan secessionist discourse employs anti-constitutionalism arguments, the ambiguity in the means used for achieving its goal of the independence and, finally, the commitment to constitutionalism in the post-independence scenario. Accordingly, the chapter traces possible inconsistencies in the Catalan secessionists’ approach to constitutionalism as well as the disorientation that these inconsistencies may produce, both within and outside the movement. The repercussions may even prove relevant to debates in other nations dealing with secession movements, such as Canada and the United Kingdom

Spain has developed into a quasi-federal state over the last four decades. After Spaniards initial reluctance when the regional governments (‘Estado de las autonomias’) were created, citizens have increasingly supported political decentralisation. However, the surge for Catalan independence and the subsequent constitutional crisis provoked by the secession attempt in 2017 may have changed the attitudes of many, who are now much more critical of Spain’s territorial structure. This chapter confirms that the parliamentary elites are significantly more supportive of regional autonomy than citizens, and the gap in congruence has increased from 2009 to 2018. However, there are differences among the political groups: new parties are more congruent with their voters than traditional mainstream formations, but there is not conclusive evidence that ideology makes a significant difference in this issue.

The chapter examines Mariano Moreno’s writings in the Gazeta de Buenos-Ayres on law and sovereignty during the Spanish monarchy’s constitutional crisis. It traces Moreno’s Rousseauan preoccupation with the enlightened legislator back to Scholasticism. Sharman uses deconstruction to place under erasure the critical Scholastic distinction between the origins and the exercise of sovereignty essential to Moreno’s deliberations on the Buenos Aires Junta’s anticolonial transfer of power. He identifies the importance of faith and time to the concept and practice of sovereignty and challenges idealised visions of an alternative Hispanic tradition of divisible sovereignty. The chapter draws upon Derrida’s work on law and force and his seminars on the theological quality of all sovereignty, of which the revolutionary legislator is merely a hyperbolic example.

This chapter discusses the 2018 constitutional crisis in Sri Lanka, and its implications for the future of constitutional democracy, when it is understood against the historical trajectory of Sri Lanka’s post-colonial political development. The office of Head of State is examined in the context of its relationship to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and its relationship to Parliament. In both its dominion and republican incarnations, the horizontal political accountability of the Sri Lankan Head of State has depended on the Cabinet and Parliament. The way Governor General and President understood these two accountability relationships, and so stretched, and, on occasion, broke them, is thus central to explaining the office of the Sri Lankan Head of State. The 2018 crisis highlighted three features of the system. The first is that despite recent reforms to curtail the powers of the presidency, older patterns of political behaviour had survived. Nevertheless, secondly, the strengthening of the constitutional position of the Prime Minister and Parliament vis-a-vis the President did have an effect in controlling backsliding, and in this respect, there was a revival of Westminster traditions of parliamentary democracy, in particular the twin principles of confidence and responsibility. Finally, the fundamental tension between these authoritarian and democratic tendencies of the systemic culture was reflected in the breakdown of the semi-presidential executive in the aftermath of the 2018 crisis, and was revealed with tragic consequences in the governmental failures that led to the Easter Sunday 2019 terror attacks.

This chapter addresses the question of whether regional secessionism can be seen as a threat to European integration, with a particular focus on Scotland and Catalonia. This chapter reviews the political-science literature on regional secession and European integration and explores different ways of interpreting the effects of European integration on regional separatism. It discusses different interpretations of how the European Union (EU) law and policies can be applied and understood in the event that a region of an EU member state achieves independence through secession. It analyses current political developments (e.g. Brexit and the constitutional crisis in Catalonia) and highlights the political and normative challenges that regional secessionism poses for the EU and its member states. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the standing of the regions within the EU could be strengthened and how demands for secession might be managed within the framework of existing member states.

This chapter begins by analysing the reaction to the so-called Esquilache Riots of 1766 in the Spanish Bourbon Monarchy and its extensive empire. The return to order made it necessary to combine traditional corporate language with the emerging repertory of the mixed constitution. Supplementing one other, these two languages—also present among the rebels—enabled the development of reforms that entailed a strengthening of representation at the expense of participation, and defined a new subject excluded from representation, the plebe. The extensive last section of the chapter describes the process that, from the formation of popular juntas in 1808 until the drafting of the 1812 Constitution in Cadiz, turned this framework on its head, establishing an inclusive popular citizenship fostering the primacy of participation over representation.

It is one of the paradoxes of Nigeria’s decolonization that the country’s most pre-eminent nationalist figure, Nnamdi Azikiwe, emerged at independence in the position of constitutional head of state, and that he had been put there at the behest of his new allies in the Northern Region. This chapter presents a first account of Azikiwe’s tenure as Governor-General (1960–63) and then President of Nigeria (1963–66), and his role in the nation-wide constitutional crisis of December 1964–January 1965, which pushed Nigeria towards military coup, civil war, and the shift towards ‘executive presidencies’ in the decades to follow.

Michael T. Oswald and John D. Robertson introduce the broader impact of partisan polarization in contemporary American politics and lay the foundation for the remaining chapters of this volume. They offer some contextual perspective on the important interactive effect of affective partisan polarization and the impact polarization has on constructing pathways to opening conflict between opposing partisan interests. The literature and empirical evidence reviewed in this chapter compel the conclusion that it is these pathways that fuel and propel not a constitutional crisis but rather the persistent and common strategy of norm derogation in the American political system.

This contribution discusses the circumstances and conditions under which Congress decides to impeach a president—and when it prefers to evade or repudiate the political demands to remove him from office. It compares the philosophical debate at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia with the most intriguing cases of impeachment debates in the 23 decades thereafter. It asks why the House of Representatives did impeach Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and was willing to impeach Richard Nixon, whereas it tabled so many other attempts to prosecute a president. It also examines why the Senate was all but certain to convict Nixon but acquitted Johnson and Clinton. Finally, it draws some lessons from the Johnson, Nixon and Clinton precedents with respect to the impeachment debate today: Could the 45th President of the United States be impeached—and should he be? The answer to both is unequivocally: Yes. In order to confront what has turned into a constitutional crisis and to prevent a further erosion of democracy, the impeachment of Donald Trump—after thorough investigations and public hearings in Congress—will be indispensable.

This chapter deals with the extra-constitutional measures King Sobhuza II took to resolve the stand-off between the judicial and legislative arms of government by staging an auto-coup d’etat against the Independence Constitution and assuming personal rule—a development that has eluded scholars in their study of the 1973 constitutional crisis in Swaziland. The auto-coup was followed by a period of royal benevolent despotism that filled the constitutional void and was characterized by a combination of harsh draconian proclamations and decrees, and a paternalistic, reconciliatory, and integrative approach towards King Sobhuza’s political opponents. King Sobhuza never succeeded in filling the constitutional void he created before his death in 1982, although he managed to reinstate Parliament.

We saw in the previous chapter how resentment at the way in which the tribute issue had been handled contributed to the constitutional crisis and the subsequent spasm of revolt. The pall of Cypriot resentment lingered over the politically stagnant years that followed. By the end of the decade, with the resurgence of political activity in a growing economy and most dramatically, the outbreak of war, the issue became irrelevant. We will examine the efforts of the governors, in years of severe depression, to exploit the financial deficit—“the unfinished business”—of the 1920s, to bring about the return of the tribute surplus to the island and thus allow them to embellish their autocracy with a potential for economic growth. We will look at the extent to which the metropolitan response depended on the prospects of the island becoming a naval base. This tendency was symbolised in the equating of the return of the surplus with the extension of Famagusta port. How far removed were these concerns from the very different world inhabited by the Cypriots? The receding prospect of enosis intensified their need to preserve their cultural heritage. Politics found subliminal expression in culture and sports, while an embryonic socialism found refuge in the trade union movement. At the same time, the urban Turkish Cypriots absorbed the attitudes of the Kemalist republic. How did the developments of the Second World War bring enosis once more to the political forefront? How did this link up with, and what other factors were involved in a new British willingness to invest in the development and welfare of the island?

The referendum of October 1st 2017 on Catalan Secession and the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Catalonia were the culmination of the grave political and constitutional crisis in Spain started in September 11th 2012 by Catalan authorities. The referendum was both unilateral and illegal. The law on such Referendum was passed by Catalan Parliament on 6th September without any agreement with Catalan opposition parties and the Spanish government. The Constitutional Court suspended and later annulated the law. In this Chapter we refer to the contradiction of such Referendum on Secession with democratic and legal guarantees according to Spanish Constitutional, theoretical and European (Venice Commission) standards.

As Solzhenitsyn asserted, for Russia the twentieth century was time wasted in a dead-end communist experiment. Yet the period between 1985 and 2000 was one of great change and hope that the twenty-first century would be decidedly different. Gorbachev’s perestroika and the subsequent liberal reforms were meant to lead the country to a competitive market economy and a free political system, and to herald its acceptance within the community of democratic states. But these objectives were never achieved, and the transition period ended as unexpectedly as it had begun. The country’s development has thus assumed the shape of a parabolic curve: from the original, Soviet authoritarian political order towards more open, liberal government and then back to a new authoritarian system meet the challenges of modernity. In charting how and why this happened, this chapter addresses the following questions. Why have those forces that appeared so suddenly but initiated a clear and powerful reform movement yielded to authoritarian reaction? Why has Russia found itself severely isolated internationally? Why does the established authority appear to be (and probably is) a simple reflection of the enduring nature of Russian society? Why when this movement appeared so strong are their no remaining “signs of life”. Finally, despite the apparent stability of the current regime, how sustainable, in fact, is the current order?

Oliver Elliott examines how the press responded to Syngman Rhee’s arrest and violent repression of a large number of legislators during the 1952 constitutional crisis. It shows how the majority of American media outlets treated Rhee’s anti-democratic methods as, at worst, only a mild provocation and gave the story marginal attention, reflecting the widespread sympathy for Rhee amongst the highest levels of the American media elite, the logistical challenges of reporting on the political situation in South Korea and a belief that South Korean domestic affairs were largely beyond the purview of the international community. The Rhee regime also proved highly adept at presenting his move against the National Assembly as satisfying the popular will of the nation.

In the election of 1880, Northampton chose Charles Bradlaugh as one of their two MPs. In doing so, they precipitated a constitutional crisis that would run for six years.

All Federal and devolved systems of government divide competences between two orders of government, and relations between them have to be managed through systems of intergovernmental relations (IGR). Anderson and Gallagher describe and analyse these in Canada and the UK. IGR is predominantly an executive matter in both, with little role for the legislative assemblies. Both are relatively informal, without substantial institutionalization, in spite of attempts. Instead, IGR is dealt with at a high level by political negotiation and on a day-to-day level by officials dealing with practical and technical matters. Yet there are important differences between the two, resulting from their distinct histories and the radical asymmetry of the UK arrangements. Devolution is a side issue most of the time in London but comes to the fore at a time of constitutional crisis, such as the Northern Ireland peace process or the Scottish independence referendum. This makes it easier for the UK to concede, incrementally, more powers to Scotland, with some tendency for Wales to play catch-up. The distinct politics of each of the devolved territories has also made British IGR largely bilateral even on constituional issues. Federal–provincial relations on the other hand are at the heart of Canadian policy-making in important fields. The Canadian system is consciously multilateral, actively resisting increased asymmetry. The fact that there are other provinces means Quebec cannot have as distinct a status as, say, Scotland in the UK. Canadian IGR are long established, while the UK’s are still a novelty. Inevitably, therefore, it is the UK which can take lessons from Canadian experience.