To make “We the People”: Constitutional founding in postwar Japan and South Korea.

This article is a theoretically-informed comparative analysis of the constitution-making processes in Japan and South Korea after the end of the Second World War. Written under the hegemonic influence of the United States and against the backdrop of the dawning Cold War, both constitutions demonstrate the inadequacies of the conventional theoretical account of “We the People” as “constituent power.” We argue that the “constituent people” was forged in the course of a deep constitutional politics—rather than vice versa—in which the role of “externalities” and the resuscitation of “useable pasts” were intrinsically tied to the formation of new constitutional peoplehood in postwar Japan and postcolonial Korea. Going beyond the common presupposition that a well-defined constituent people exists prior to the constitutional moment with a unified political will and robust agency, we suggest that the Japanese and Korean “exception” may actually prove to be the rule for theorizing about constitutional democracy in the age of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]