II Unrest and crisis in constitutional movements
As aforementioned, a new round of constitutional movements has converged into a tempestuous global tide, spreading to almost every country. With the combined foundation of the traditional authoritarian government and military regime gradually destroyed, great changes have taken place in the nature, structure, system, operation and various other levels of the constitutional government. The actual constitutional practices show us that: the old order has been broken, but the new order has not come into being yet. During this process, particularly as the diverse elements are interacting, impacting and infiltrating each other, what follows is the radical social unrest and political crisis.
1.Constitutional reforms in different countries are facing complex and volatile external environment and unstable internal environment due to the wrestle between globalization and anti-globalization, terrorists, regional conflicts, wars, etc.
The tide of economic globalization and internationalization of society, politics and civil life surging from the second half of the 20th century pushed the development of the world economics and politics to a completely new stage. The globally economic liberalization came into the top priority of countries to set up their policies and measures. What comes with it is a surge of anti-globalization. We can tell that, behind the phenomenon that every country is adapting itself to the trend of globally economic liberalization, there is a universal social reality we have to face that the wealth gap is getting enlarged. Therefore, responding to the economic freedom, the calls for the economic equality is also getting louder. "Viewing from the changing situations of the world political pattern, with the drastic changes of Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Yalta System... the world pattern shows a trend of ‘single-polarization and multipolarization''." [13] Following with this trend, the antagonism of the hegemonism and anti-hegemonism always gets demonstrated in the current international societies. For example, after the Cold War, the regional conflicts and wars occurred in succession in Somalia, Balkan and Middle East area caused severe humanitarian sufferings.
In the 1990s, the Gulf War, the US and UK''s war against Iraq, and the US-led NATO''s bombardment in Yugoslavia...particularly, after the "9·11" terrorist incident, US locked its anti-terrorism target on the Taliban regime of Afghanistan. Under the permission of the UN, US immediately launched the anti-terrorism wars on Afghanistan, and destroyed the state government of Afghanistan by arms. Later, US and UK set out troops to Iraq and very soon toppled the Saddam regime and executed Saddam. Lots of scholars criticized this from the perspective of human rights protection: "the Iraq wars initiated by the US surly trampled on the basic principle of international human rights law and brought extremely negative and bad influence to the human rights protection...the prison abuses by American troops further exposed the hideous nature of the war of trampling human rights." [14] Now, Iraq is promoting its rebuilding plan of constitutional government under the guidance of the hegemony theory of America. However, there is every sign that the situation in Iraq is still severe, and its constitution government seems to be far away. As the cover story of the "Weekly Standard" of 28 July 2008 says, "the political situation of Iraq is still out of joint, leaving full of uncertainties there." [15] So we can see, the current constitutional reforms in countries all over the world are facing unprecedented great challenges from external environment. All elements result in the unstable political situations in every country.
2. Government elites, imbalanced political powers, armies, political parties, and all non-governmental sectors are involved in this reform, aggravating the volatility of this constitutional movement.
As a matter of fact, the power distribution in the constitutional reform is imbalanced in different countries. [16] Taking Bhutan for example, the main motive force of its constitutional reform is the kingdom, a true political elite. "Over the years, generations of kings have been keeping giving up the power in their hands gradually to return the state power to the civilians." Looking at the whole process of social change in Bhutan, you will see that its constitutional reform was conducted and accomplished in a peaceful environment all the time. Different from Bhutan, the constitutional transition of Nepal was finished in a violent political competition. On the one hand, the former king of Nepal kept promoting political measures to enhance his kingship and military power during the constitutional reforms and even attempted to build a new government under his leadership through personal arbitrary dictation; on the other side, all political party powers uncompromisingly fought against the autocratic regalia, but at the same time, they hold different opinions about how to set up a constitutional system. Moreover, the interference of the international community is also an important contributing factor of the final accomplishment of the constitutional government. Until the agreement against autocratic regalia was reached, the political deadlock lasting for several months was over. [17]
At present, the political situation of Thailand attracted more attention. Since the military coupe in 2006, in the following year of 2007, the Surayud provisional government reshuffled the cabinet twice with one turbulence after another. In August, 2007, the new constitution was passed. And in December of the same year, the People Power Party (PPP) won the presidential election. At the beginning of 2008, the PPP associated with other parties established the new government. But the situation of Thailand was not thus stabilized; instead it remains turbulent today. For instance, in April, 2009, the East Asia Summit planned to be held in Thailand had finally to be cancelled because of the internal turbulence of Thailand. [18] So we can see that the baneful influence has enlarged from the internal to the external. In fact, companying with the political turbulence, the economy of Thailand also gets a hard hit. It is said that, "the economy of Thailand maintains slow growth; the economic growth rate of 2007 is only 4.8%." [19]
As we all know, the military coup of Thailand has its special political and historical causes. [20] The populace is another powerful force [21] taking part in the country''s reform. Thailand society suffers in the pernicious alternation of the elitism and the populism. Associated social abuses include that "election briberies, conflicts and even violent events are happening in broad daylight, and such dark sides caused the negative consciousness opposed to democracy, and became the breeding ground of authoritarian politics." [22] The Thailand phenomenon shows us that, within all countries in the transforming time, if the political elites, imbalanced political powers, armies, parties, and all non-governmental sectors are involved in this tide, it will definitely aggravate the complexity and volatility of this global constitutional movement.
3. The systematic defects and functional drawbacks of constitutional movement caused political destabilization and local turbulence.
