Thematic Issue Editorial Comment: Constitutional Struggles in Asia

This thematic issue of the Federal Law Review engages with constitutional dimensions of commentaries on the authoritarian turn in many Asian states. Such commentaries observe that despite decades of work to promote democratic systems in Asia, multiple regimes have worked through the institutions and processes of those systems to advance increasingly illiberal conditions. The present issue draws attention to constitutional aspects of the authoritarian turn, highlighting the role of constitutional contestation within the systemic shifts occurring in Asia. The articles assembled in this issue illustrate the permutations of constitutional struggles in a range of Asian states, delineating how the respective constitution of each state serves as both a locus and object of contestation between opposed political forces. While they address the contextual specifics of individual countries, the articles collectively facilitate a comparison of the various manifestations of constitutional contestation across the Asia region. In doing so, they inform readers about the features of constitutional discourses in Asia, not as a monolithic region but instead as a varied terrain of nuanced contention. The comparison follows the orientation of scholars such as Rosalind Dixon, Ran Hirschl and Mark Tushnet, who, in an issue of the American Journal of Comparative Law, called for more comparative analyses of constitutions, using holistic approaches with interdisciplinary methods that invite a wider range of voices encompassing underrepresented places in the world. Hirschl sought to go beyond constitutional studies as the review of texts and doctrines, and to look instead for constitutional studies which explore topics of ‘culture, economics, institutional structures, power, and strategy’ in a constitutional universe. Dixon, however, cautioned that such goals require a breadth and depth of knowledge about socio-political factors specific to a jurisdiction, which in turn