Constitutional Order in Changing Societies
张义清
【全文】
In the second half of 20th Century, Samuel P. Huntington, a western political master of political science, systematically studied the issues on the political stability of developing countries during 1950s~1960s. His findings are mainly incorporated in his book named "Political Order in Changing Societies" in which many ideas aroused extensive concern of people at that time. As stated in his book, there is possibility of concurrence of political decadence and political development in the developing countries. What the newly independent countries actually experienced was the increasingly intensive social and political disorder... Undoubtedly, all these are the main causes of rebellion, military coup, weakness and inefficiency of government. Huntington urged that the third world countries shall establish authoritarian government to maintain political stability. Certainly, it reflected people''s political demands at that time. On the contrary, another western figure Fukuyama also made points about political order. However, to the utmost, he fairly defended his theory of liberal democracy and even considered the order of liberal democracy to be the last governance order of mankind. These two theories stood opposite each other at one time. Putting aside the crucial impact of their interests and standpoints on the orientation of theories, as a matter of fact, both Huntington and Fukuyama neither mentioned the constitutional order nor conducted any in-depth study on the constitutional mechanism that might cause the social turbulence and political destabilization. Thus, obviously, their theories have the limited applicability and explanatory power in terms of current political situations. It can be seen that, currently, the modernization is always carried out together with other reforms in the same time-space domain. "Most of countries are exerting the dominion in the name of constitution and law. Although institutional availability and operating mode of constitutional system are different from country to country, all nations, without exception, are strictly controlling interests expression and political participation by means of constitution, such as the activities organized by political parties and interests groups, and the social movements. The ideology or regime considers modernization and economic growth as the main objectives." [1] Undoubtedly, it forms the distinct constitutional features of constitutional movements in our times. Constitutional order refers to justicial social order built up on the basis of humble "rule of law" spirit, reflecting meritorious functions of modern democracy and realistic human care for safeguarding human rights. It is an ideal target of social values and also an actual harmonious status of civil life. [2] Therefore, starting from the new trends and new features of current constitutional movements in different countries, this paper specifically discussed and analyzed the theoretical and practical issues about how to ensure the modern countries steadily and orderly pushing forward their constitutional reforms, and how to maintain the dynamic and stable constitutional order in their countries.
I. Global Constitutional Tide
Since the second half of the 20th century, the productivity and production relationship of global economy have changed essentially. The trend of economic globalization and internationalization of political social life is increasingly emerging, which are reflected in the constitutional field by various constitutional reform measures adopted by different countries. The global constitutional movements show unprecedented new trends and new features.
1. Unceasingly surging democratization waves
Since 1980s, the world has set off a wave of democratization. Just as Huntington stated, "the democratization is the most magnificent and significant political transition throughout the history of mainkind. In terms of development speed, "the third wave" of democratization created a "miracle": the democratization experienced a decade in Poland, 10 months in Hungary, 10 weeks in East Germany, 10 days in Czechoslovakia, and only 10 hours in Romania". [3] In fact, "the third wave" of democratization can be considered as the "swan song" of the 20th century. In terms of the range of influenced, almost all countries in the world were influenced by this tide of democratization, and more than 120 countries have established the so-called democracy. [4] The trend is ongoing even in the 21st century.
On March 24, 2008, the Kingdom of Bhutan, a country located at the foot of the Himalaya, the first time in its history, held the national congress election, and over 200,000 citizens voted on that day. After the election, the constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy officially replaced its 100-year-old hereditary monarchy. As provided in the Bhutan''s constitution, "the exercise of royal power shall be strictly limited and bonded, and the parliament has the right to impeach and dismiss the kingdom". [5] Coincidentally, two months later, constitutional democracy movement also happened in Bhutan''s neighboring country, Nepal. On May 28, 2008, the constitutional convention was held in Katmandu, capital of Nepal. Under the agreement of three major parties, a nominal position was set up to replace the kingdom. The majority of state power is centralized on the premier. Former King Gyanendra Shah was compelled to leave his palace and became an ordinary citizen. Since then, the House of Shah of Nepal of 239 years of history announced its end... The national system of Nepal was transformed from the monarch into the republicanism. [6]
Monarch is a normal political phenomenon in the course of human civilization. We can also say, monarch is a kind of political mode that most of countries experienced. For traditional societies, facing the cruel reality that the Law of Jungle was everything, the monarch which was built on the firm foundation of individual authority and "centralized power" set the stage for the continuation and development of specific nations at that time, even though the query about the "legality" of traditional monarch of "having authority but no liberty" never disappear. So, the new wave of democratization brought an unprecedented and tremendous shock to the traditional monarch. Moving forward from the tradition to the modern, it is an inevitable history and realistic choice of f all countries that are moving forward.
2.Constitutional government has a long way to go.
In the 1990s, some scholars pointed out that, the western liberal democracy has surmounted the ideologies of hereditary monarch, authoritarianism and fascism ect., and has came into "the end of human ideological progress" and "the ultimate form of human government", so the "end of history" came into being. [7] However, in fact, as far as the actual situation of constitutional reforms currently ongoing in the western countries concerned, the theory of the "end of history" is not true.
Taking Russia for example, when the former Soviet Union announced its disintegration after "8·19 Incident" in 1991, the constitution and the laws were abolished at once. Russia rapidly turned to the track of western political and economical operation and development. Yeltsin was elected as the first president of Russia, which marked the beginning of presidential government mode of Russia. At the beginning, due to poor division of power between the president and the parliament, the shade of former Soviet Union still had a great existence in the political structure at that time, which was mainly manifested as: compared with the president, the parliament of Russia at that time seemed to have the superior power. In many cases, the president had to get the authorization from the parliament before exercising his power. So Yeltsin proposed to amend the constitution in order to expand his power and to make the Russia a country of completed western presidential government. However, lots of members of the parliament were adamant in their opposition to his proposal. The event developed into an open clash of two big power organs and even triggered the incident of "October Bloodshed. Later, the winner president Yeltsin carried out a series of measures to weaken the power of the parliament and to further enhance his dominant position. In 1993, the country passed the new constitution by referendum, through which the power of the president was expanded to the extreme. According to the constitution, the president shall have the right to "decide the basic direction of domestic and foreign policies" and the right to "issue orders and directives which the whole country must execute"; besides that, the president shall have the staffing rights of significant positions of all central organs of the federation, but also shall have the forceful veto power to the parliament and the right to dismiss the State Duma, etc. On the contrary, the parliament''s restraints on the president became very limited. Putin carried forward this constitution reforming policy as a whole after taking the office, and conducted a series of political restructures involving the federal system and the upper house composition under the general frame of the constitution. In a word, the centralized presidential government has always been the principle orientation of Russian political reform until now. But there are different opinions about this in the academic circle, like someone thinks that, "through the top-down constitutional reform, a complete constitutional system was established overnight. But the current presidential government lacks a legal foundation. The constitution clearly provides for separation of three powers, but the struggles among them are parochial. The struggles between the president and the parliament mainly reflect the struggles between small groups and individuals, with the general interests of the country and society not been addressed yet. [8] On the face of it, the constitutional connotation and the realistic constitutional order behind the constitutional reform that Russia has being carried forward till today and the consequent government mode could not be simply realized through the relevant system establishment. As a matter of fact, the constitutional government of Russia still has a long way to go.
