The constitutions of the last two centuries are monuments to an eminently modern enterprise: the reconstruction of the political order by rational human effort. Constitution-making is a deliberate attempt at institution-building at the fundamental level of laying down the normative and legal foundations of the political order. Framing a constitution always purports to be an act of foundation; an act intended to break with the past, and with the existing cultural and institutional traditions, in which principled discussions take the place of everyday horse-trading in politics.
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Saïd Amir Arjomand (1992) studied this question.