Research Design
The goal of the Comparative Constitutions Project is to collect data on the formal characteristics of current and historical written constitutions for most independent states since 1789. To achieve this goal, we conduct research in three core areas based on the three phases of our initial research design.
In the first phase, we have constructed a complete chronology of constitutional events for all independent states. In order to do so, we first had to determine criteria for what constitutes a “constitution,” decide how to handle uncodified and quasi-constitutions, and establish a unit of analysis.
In the second phase, we endeavor to acquire English texts for each of the constitutional events identified in the chronology. Thanks to several excellent sources of constitutional documents, we have gathered English texts for the vast majority of constitutional events, and we continue to acquire and translate texts for new events.
Finally, we developed a conceptual inventory of the elements of constitutions in which to interpret their content. We used these concepts to construct a survey instrument with which to code constitutional documents. All of this required a systematic set of coding procedures and custom-built survey software.