Un análisis a detalle de las fuentes académicas muestran que incluso la literatura especializada sobre cuestiones vinculadas a la eficacia constitucional han presupuesto conceptualizaciones que son teóricamente problemáticas con sus objetivos de investigación, y que ello los puede conducir a problemas de orden teórico y empírico.

En otros términos, afirmo que la investigación teórica y empírica vinculada a estas preguntas puede beneficiarse de una conceptualización clara de eficacia constitucional (o de manera más general de eficacia formal) que sea consistente con los objetivos de su investigación. En este artículo defiendo una tesis modesta pero, espero, útil: Ignorar ciertas dificultades conceptuales es perjudicial para el progreso de la agenda teórica y empírica sobre la eficacia constitucional. El camino a su resolución está plagado de dificultades conceptuales, teóricas y metodológicas.

❼uándo y por qué las constituciones codificadas son eficaces? Responder estas preguntas cruciales y aparentemente directas han resultado un reto mayúsculo. I argue that the conceptualizations of constitutional (or more broadly formal) efficacy used in their theoretical proposals are not adequately suited to their own research objectives, and that this conceptual misfit affects the theoretical consistency and empirical applicability of their conclusions. To exemplify this point, I analyze the conceptualization of constitutional efficacy used in two influential political science texts: Barry Weingast's “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law” and Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky's Informal Institutions and Democracy. It is not uncommon for social and political science research in this area to overlook the question “how should constitutional efficacy be conceptualized?” A close analysis of academic sources makes it clear that even specialized literature on questions related to constitutional (or more broadly formal) efficacy have assumed conceptualizations that are theoretically problematic given their research objectives, potentially leading to theoretical inconsistencies or inaccurate empirical conclusions. In other words, I posit that empirical and theoretical research linked to these questions can benefit from a clear conceptualization of constitutional (or more broadly formal) efficacy that is consistent with their research objectives. In this article, I make a modest, but nevertheless hopefully useful, claim: that overlooking certain conceptual difficulties is detrimental to the advancement of the theoretical and empirical agenda on constitutional efficacy.

The road to responding to them is paved with conceptual, theoretical, and empirical difficulties. When and why are codified constitutions efficacious? Answering these key and apparently straightforward questions turns out to be extremely challenging.

Preguntas de trivial pursuit pdf