Why do Countries Adopt Constitutional Review?

This paper discusses the recent wide-ranging global movement towards constitutional review (the ability of judges to supervise the constitution). The authors utilize a new dataset on constitutional review for 204 countries for the period 1781-2011 to test various theories that explain the adoption of constitutional review. The authors find substantial evidence that the adoption of constitutional review is best explained by domestic politics, and in particular, uncertainties in the electoral market. More specifically, they find that electoral competition, as measured by the difference between the proportion of seats held by the first and second parties in the legislative branch, predicts the adoption of constitutional review. In contrast, the authors find no general evidence that constitutional review adoption results from ideational factors, federalism, or international norm diffusion.