The Material Study of Constitutional Change

The chapter focuses on the methodologies used in constitutional studies for understanding the role of political practices in effecting constitutional change. Three sections are devoted to the main models for the constitutional study of political practices: legal constitutionalism, political constitutionalism and the material study of constitutional orders. After having criticised the limits of the first two approaches, the chapter provides the main methodological tenets of the material approach and puts forward the case for its stronger capacity to grasp the role of political practices and their impact on constitutional change. The last section takes up three case studies (Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Turkey) with a view to illustrate how to identify and assess the impact of political practices on constitutional changes from the material perspective.