Attempting constitutional reform on the island microjurisdiction of Alderney

Abstract

Research into state size and democracy has revealed that the very smallest states are more likely to be democratic than their larger counterparts. Being an island, as well as having a British colonial past, is also associated with a state’s observance of democratic measures. With these observations in mind, this article examines an unsuccessful attempt to reform the political and constitutional governance of the Channel Island of Alderney, a self-governing dependency of the British Crown. Why was political reform rejected on this island microjurisdiction? Was the post-Brexit agenda too crowded to permit reform? Did Alderney have other priorities? Might smallness itself be the explanation?

Small States and Constitutional Reform: Democracy in Malta

“…"Small states, in short, can look formally liberal-democratic but might be rather illiberal in their actual workings" (Erk and Veenendaal, 2014: 136). Noting how observance of this formalinformal distinction assists in revealing a fuller picture of small states' democracies, Morris (2018: 111, citing Veenendaal, 2015aVeenendaal, 2015b) states that "a counterargument to the established narrative on small jurisdictions and democracies has emerged. This claims that the formalistic … approach does not provide the complete answer to questions of the democratization of small states … [indeed,] the blunt focus on institutions and the legal framework obscures the rather less democratic nature of political practices that can be experienced in small states".…”