Conclusion

Abstract

It is submitted that this multi-element model allows of a more subtle, more objective and more detailed analysis of constitutional systems than does the static and legalistic nature of the Bryce-Wheare formulation, the ill-defined and inclusive categories of the Loewenstein-Akzin approach, and the insular approach of Kovács. It also provides an opportunity to discuss socialist constitutional theory and to attempt to compare socialist and non-socialist constitutions by means of less pejorative and less polemical terms. It seems to me that the use of such terms as ‘semantic’ (Loewenstein), ‘bourgeois constitutionalism’ (Kovács) and ‘fictive capitalist constitutions’ (Bihari) means that meaningful discussion is foreclosed and that political scientists move too close to political dogmatism. It is suggested that there is, at least, room for discussion about the merits or otherwise of ‘consolidatory’, ‘confirmatory’ and ‘manifest’ constitutions, whereas a ‘semantic’ constitution leaves little doubt that the term is a form of stigmatisation.