Research

The GCDC conducts world-leading research on democratic governance, the rule of law, and constitutional resilience.

Constitutional Resilience and Democratic Decline

Our focus on constitutional resilience seeks to understand how constitutional structure, principles, norms, and institutions can preserve and promote a genuinely democratic form of constitutionalism. While much of the constitutional law research in the last fifty years has been concerned with the achievement and consolidation of democratic constitutionalism, the present moment demands attention to its fortification against subtle corrosive pressures. One such pressure is the exploitation of constitutional structures and law itself to undermine egalitarianism and democratic government, sometimes referred to as ‘autocratic legalism’[1] or ‘abusive constitutionalism’.[2]  In their discussion of the ‘banality of authoritarianism’, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt observe that anti-democratic extremism finds expression through phenomenon such as exploiting gaps in the constitutional architecture, exploiting legal powers previous regulated by convention, and selective enforcement of the law.[3] Similarly, Nancy Bermeo considers executive aggrandisement to be a form of democratic backsliding that ‘occurs when elected executives weaken checks on executive power one by one, undertaking a series of institutional changes that hamper the power of opposition forces to challenge executive preferences’.[4]  

Our Research Strategy

In the 2024-25 academic year, the GCDC is devising a research strategy in consultation with a range of international partners. Our workstreams are being settled as we develop our strategic plan for 2025-2029. Such workstreams may include: comparative constitutional design; the rule of law; the judicial protection of human rights; the laws and customs of parliaments; federalism and multi-level government; the legal regulation of elections, referendums, and political parties (the ‘law of democracy’); and the role of data, media regulation, and democracy. More details about workstreams will be available soon.

The GCDC will be a locus for discussion of these themes, and will support its members and any partners towards producing research that sheds light on how to achieve constitutional resilience or restore democratic constitutionalism following a period of decline. We welcome visitors and partners who are working on research on such themes.