Berihun Adugna Gebeye. A Theory of African Constitutionalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. ix + 243 pp. Table of cases. Table of legislation. Index. $99.00. Hardcover. ISBN: 9780192893925.

Abstract

A Theory of African Constitutionalism was one of several volumes in the Oxford Comparative Constitutionalism series to arrive in 2021. Two years and several additional works in that series later, Berihun Adugna Gebeye's book remains the most comprehensive analysis of constitutionalism in Africa to appear in decades, if not ever. With this ambitious, thoughtful, and detailed study of African constitutions since pre-colonial times, Gebeye offers a new theoretical frame to better understand, evaluate, and improve African constitutional development. Using case studies of South Africa, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, he explains why certain constitutional structures have arisen across Africa and how future constitutionalists might ensure that African nations "execute their constitutional promises."In Chapters 1 through 3, Gebeye introduces his theory of "legal syncretism." Bridging the "dualism" between "legal centralism" (where law is inherently tied to and arising from the state) and "legal pluralism" (which incorporates non-state sources of law such as custom and tradition), syncretism is the "process and result of adoption, rejection, invention and transformation of diverse and seemingly opposite legal rules, principles, and practices into a constitutional state with imperial or colonial legacies" (10).If that seems like a mouthful, it is. But Chapter 2 does a masterful job of explaining syncretism as a "blending" of the indigenous constitutions of pre-colonial Africa, the "superimposed" constitutions of the colonial powers, and the postcolonial constitutional systems that have rejected and adopted various aspects of liberal constitutionalism, customary and religious law, and traditional authority. Precisely because African constitutions have arisen from and are embedded in this "constitutional matrix," studying them as only state law imposed "from above" or indigenous practices "from below" fails to fully grasp their complexities.Gebeye is most persuasive in this first section. His notion of syncretism as both a "process" that drives constitutional development and the constitutions that "result" is insightful and better reflects the general history than previous