This introduction is focused on two main points. First, it provides an explanation of the continued relevance of the notion of the material constitution in constitutional studies and beyond. It does so by showing the added epistemic value of the notion compared to other conceptions: the political constitutions, the living constitution, the mixed constitution. Second, it gives an overview of the contents of the Handbook by explaining its organisation and its thematic unities.

Chapter 8 systematically compares immigration politics in Morocco and Tunisia and brings to the fore some striking continuities and parallels across democratic and autocratic contexts. I show that the state’s imperative to ensure its legitimation and sovereignty drives some of the key similarities in Moroccan and Tunisian immigration policymaking, such as the tendency to safeguard state power by creating exemption regimes or enacting changes informally. I also demonstrate that histories of state formation and official national identity narratives are key to understanding contemporary immigration politics in both countries. Lastly, I tease out how Morocco’s autocratization and Tunisia’s democratization affected the role, weight and interactions of state apparatus, civil society and external actors in immigration policy over the twenty-first century. I show that while the power of the executive and the weight of domestic political and civil society actors seem sensitive to a ’regime effect’, bureaucratic and international policy dynamics around immigration seem largely unaffected by political regime dynamics.

Chapter 6 explores the possibility of composing higher-order macro-institutions, starting with micro-norms/rules and institutes and their mutual compatibility and balancing. A necessary precondition for power-sharing is monopolisation of destructive resources and ‘legitimate’ violence over a territorial space: the ‘territorial institution’. In territories in which destructive means have been successfully monopolised and there are no challenges to the ruling function, ‘fundamental norms’ or ‘constitutions’ may develop that delineate the institutional regime. The territory, the constitution and the institutional regime are macro-institutions located at the highest level in the vertical layering of institutions and are complex combinations of single norms/rules and institutes. But, as macro-phenomena, they are characterised by emerging properties that cannot exclusively be reduced to lower-level properties. Different regimes rest on the prominence of some institutes over others. In some cases, the predominant institutes damage the others excessively. In other cases, the institutes balance each other. The chapter suggests that institutional analysis generalisations should concern political institutes, their balancing and combination, and the likely effects. Actors’ preferences and constellations of actors should be kept separate from institutional analysis. Adding them results in generalisations concerning the interaction between political institutions and political structures; that is, in the analysis of ‘political regimes’.

Chapter 3 identifies and discusses three periods in the record of democracy of Latin American countries since 1880. In a first period, one of oligarchic dominance, most countries had a variety of types of authoritarianism and only a few countries had experience with partial democracy. In a second period, that of mass politics and regime instability, the entry of the masses and women into politics created pressure for democratic change, and the region started to gain considerable experience with partial and fuller democracy. However, tensions due to the transition from elite to mass politics and then the Cuban Revolution led to political polarization, high levels of violence, and rule by right-wing dictatorships. Waves of democratization were followed by waves of de-democratization. Finally, in a third, ongoing period, Latin America entered a democratic age. Nearly every country in the region has had a democratic regime. Democracies have become more inclusive, as restrictions on the right to vote, that excluded women and the poor, were no longer imposed. Democracies have also endured. This chapter shows that the history of democracy in Latin America is one of considerable progress.

An international economic boom was the necessary condition for the sustainability of the inclusionary turn. The boom affected countries differently depending on domestic structures of power. If the economic boom coincided with the twin collapse of the party system and the capital markets, the inclusionary turn manifested itself as rentier populism, a coalition that dominated Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Rentier Populism is the social basis of super-presidentialism in good economic times. Yet, it becomes incompatible both with socioeconomic inclusion and liberal democracy in hard times.