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Inscribing the State: Constitution Drafting Manuals as Textual Technologies
- Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2020
- pp. 101-117
- 10.1353/hum.2020.0000
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
The rise of expert knowledge in constitutional matters marks a turn toward "constitutional technicity," where constitution drafting is regarded as a domain of technical expertise inhabited by neutral and politically divested actors. This article considers the constitution drafting manual or handbook as a genre in which technical expertise confronts the political. These documents consolidate a view of what constitutes "best practice" in the production of contemporary state identity, yet they also act into the field of state-building, naturalizing particular understandings of the state that reflect liberal legalist norms. In this sense the constitution-drafting manual is a consequential legal material that enlists values and actors in the production of contemporary stateness.