Constitutionalizing the Market Economy and the Quest for Constitutionalism

Abstract

The contributions to this volume show that the return to multiparty democracy in the 1990s was accompanied by the explicit or implicit constitutionalization of a market economy, principally through the protection of property and the insistence on freedom of contract. Although land and other natural resources are crucial to the economy of many countries, the constitutionalization of the guardianship role which the state should have over such resources is uneven. Affording protection to a market economy did not mean that the state withdrew from the marketplace: the notion of the ‘developmental state’ has seen the state playing the role both of a dominant regulator of the economy and a full participant in it, this by way of state-owned enterprises. However, despite the state’s quest for control of the domestic market, its powers are curtailed through a globalization of the economy powered by the international trading system. Finally, while constitutionalism might be a necessary element for a growing economy, it is far from a sufficient condition for it. There is, nonetheless, a strong correlation between the absence of constitutionalism and negative economic growth.