Is “Constitutional Veneration” an Obstacle to Constitutional Amendment?

IF 3.2 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE Journal of Experimental Political Science Pub Date : 2021-11-02 DOI:10.1017/XPS.2021.29

Christopher T. Dawes, James R. Zink

引用次数: 1

Abstract

Abstract Some constitutional scholars suggest that the US Constitution stands as one of the oldest yet least changed national constitutions in part because Americans’ tendency to “revere” the Constitution has left them unwilling to consider significant changes to the document. Several recent studies support aspects of this claim, but no study establishes a direct link between individuals’ respect for the Constitution and their reluctance to amend it. To address this, we replicate and extend the research design of Zink and Dawes (2016) across two survey experiments. The key difference in our experiments is we include measures of respondents’ propensity to revere the Constitution, which in turn allows us to more directly test whether constitutional veneration translates into resistance to amendment. Our results build on Zink and Dawes’s findings and show that, in addition to institutional factors, citizens’ veneration of the Constitution can act as a psychological obstacle to constitutional amendment.

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“尊宪”是宪法修正的障碍吗？

一些宪法学者认为，美国宪法是历史最悠久但修改最少的国家宪法之一，部分原因是美国人“敬畏”宪法的倾向使他们不愿考虑对宪法进行重大修改。最近的几项研究支持了这一说法的某些方面，但没有一项研究在个人对宪法的尊重与他们不愿修改宪法之间建立直接联系。为了解决这个问题，我们在两个调查实验中复制并扩展了Zink和Dawes(2016)的研究设计。在我们的实验中，关键的不同之处在于，我们纳入了受访者对宪法的尊崇倾向的衡量标准，这反过来又使我们能够更直接地测试对宪法的尊崇是否转化为对修正案的抵制。我们的研究结果建立在Zink和Dawes的研究结果的基础上，并表明，除了制度因素外，公民对宪法的崇拜可能成为宪法修正案的心理障碍。

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来源期刊

Journal of Experimental Political Science Social Sciences-Sociology and Political Science

CiteScore

5.10

自引率

8.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Experimental Political Science (JEPS) features cutting-edge research that utilizes experimental methods or experimental reasoning based on naturally occurring data. We define experimental methods broadly: research featuring random (or quasi-random) assignment of subjects to different treatments in an effort to isolate causal relationships in the sphere of politics. JEPS embraces all of the different types of experiments carried out as part of political science research, including survey experiments, laboratory experiments, field experiments, lab experiments in the field, natural and neurological experiments. We invite authors to submit concise articles (around 4000 words or fewer) that immediately address the subject of the research. We do not require lengthy explanations regarding and justifications of the experimental method. Nor do we expect extensive literature reviews of pros and cons of the methodological approaches involved in the experiment unless the goal of the article is to explore these methodological issues. We expect readers to be familiar with experimental methods and therefore to not need pages of literature reviews to be convinced that experimental methods are a legitimate methodological approach. We will consider longer articles in rare, but appropriate cases, as in the following examples: when a new experimental method or approach is being introduced and discussed or when novel theoretical results are being evaluated through experimentation. Finally, we strongly encourage authors to submit manuscripts that showcase informative null findings or inconsistent results from well-designed, executed, and analyzed experiments.

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