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The Structural Limits of Depoliticisation in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT Sri Lanka’s institutional reform project has gathered momentum with the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Amendment restored the Constitutional Council, which is mandated to recommend and approve appointments to key ‘independent’ institutions and offices. This article asks what it means to be meaningfully ‘depoliticised’, and explores the dynamics and parameters of the current institutional reform project in Sri Lanka. It argues that the entrenchment of Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism within Sri Lanka’s institutional structures has led to ‘institutional decay’. Given such decay, the article points to serious limitations in legalistic approaches that are preoccupied with improving appointment procedures. Since institutions in Sri Lanka are structurally incentivized to appease a majoritarian agenda, relying on legal-textual and institutional reform alone is inadequate. Institutional reform is ultimately constrained by the structural limits of Sri Lanka’s current constitutional framework. The article concludes that meaningful constitutional transformation requires a long-term project that aims to transform the majoritarian socio-political and cultural norms that underpin Sri Lanka’s constitutional order.