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Constitutional bills of rights and democratic transformation in post-authoritarian scenarios

ABSTRACT This article discusses the relation between bills of rights and democratic transformation processes in post-authoritarian scenarios. For that purpose, it uses as an empirical basis the post-2000 sub-Saharan and post-2005 Arab constitutional bills of rights. Their linguistic verbosity is identified as a likely predictor variable, with possible correlations tested statistically, and potential causalities (as well as epiphenomenal, non-causal relations) explored by means of a case study. The bills of rights’ specificity has been found to be inversely correlated with an effective democratic consolidation. A causal link has been identified: an excessive linguistic verbosity makes the democratic consolidation scenario more unlikely. Finally, generalising research arguments are offered, explaining the paradox of longer bills of rights leading to poor democratic transformation.