Constitutionalism in Illiberal Democracies - Resarch Group of International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL)

n the twenty years since the end of the last wave of democratization it has become clear that, along with traditional liberal-constitutional democracies, an important number of countries have embraced different forms of illiberal democracy, that is, they are regimes in which there are competitive elections of political authorities but that concentrate power around the executive office, to the point that even the courts are under the control of the government. Even though in the past there have been many authoritarian, semi-authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes which cloaked their true nature under a constitution, recent examples have shown a current of thought which tries to present these regimes as a new and more efficient type of constitutionalism, putting into question long established notions of constitutional government. This development has examples in different areas of the world, thus becoming a subject of study with great interest for scholars globally, in line with the international nature of the IACL. It should be noted, however, that the activities of the research group are not limited to the study of current examples of this type of constitutionalism, but may also include the analysis of past examples, in order to explore similarities, identify possible patterns of authoritarian constitutionalism and draw lessons which may help to better understand this phenomenon.