Written constitutions are not only likely to give rise to greater problems of interpretation than unwritten ones, but they are also harder to change. Unwritten constitutions tend to change gradually, continually, and often imperceptibly, in response to changing needs. But when a constitution lays down exact procedures for the election of the president, for relations between the executive and legislative branches, or for defining whether a particular governmental function is to be performed by the federal government or a member state, then the only constitutional way to change these procedures is by means of the procedure provided by the constitution itself for its own amendment. Any attempt to effect change by means of judicial review or interpretation is unconstitutional, unless, of course, the constitution provides that a body (such as the U.S. Supreme Court) may change, rather than interpret, the constitution.

Many constitutional documents make no clear distinction between that which is to be regarded as constitutional, fundamental, and organic, on the one hand, and that which is merely legislative, circumstantial, and more or less transitory, on the other. The constitution of the German Weimar Republic could be amended by as little as four-ninths of the membership of the Reichstag, without any requirement for subsequent ratification by the states, by constitutional conventions, or by referendum. Although Hitler never explicitly abrogated the Weimar Constitution, he was able to replace the procedural and institutional stability that it had sought to establish with a condition of almost total procedural and institutional flux.

A similar situation prevailed in the Soviet Union under the rule of Stalin. But Stalin took great trouble and some pride in having a constitution bearing his name adopted in 1936. The Stalin constitution continued, together with the Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to serve as the formal framework of government until the ratification of a new, though rather similar, constitution in 1977. The procedures established by these documents, however, were not able to provide Soviet citizens and politicians with reliable knowledge of the rules of the political process from one year to the next or with guidance as to which institutions and practices they were to consider fundamental or virtually sacrosanct and which they could safely criticize. As a result, changes in the personnel and policies of the Soviet Union and of similar Communist regimes were rarely brought about smoothly and frequently required the use of violence.

Constitutional stability

If one distinguishes between stability and stagnation on the one hand and between flexibility and flux on the other, then one can consider those constitutional systems most successful that combine procedural stability with substantive flexibility—that is, that preserve the same general rules of political procedure from one generation to the next while at the same time facilitating adaptation to changing circumstances. By reference to such criteria, those written constitutions have achieved the greatest success that are comparatively short; that confine themselves in the main to matters of procedure (including their own amendment) rather than matters of substance; that, to the extent that they contain substantive provisions at all, keep these rather vague and generalized; and that contain procedures that are congruent with popular political experience and know-how. These general characteristics appear to be more important in making for stability than such particular arrangements as the relations between various organs and levels of government or the powers, functions, and terms of tenure of different officers of state.

There is little evidence to support the thesis that a high level of citizen participation necessarily contributes to the stability of constitutional government. On the contrary, the English political economist Walter Bagehot, who in 1867 wrote a classic analysis of the English constitution (The English Constitution), stressed the “deferential” character of the English people, who were quite happy to leave government in the hands of the governing class.

Much more important than formal citizen behaviour, such as electoral participation, are informal attitudes and practices and the extent to which they are congruent with the formal prescriptions and proscriptions of the constitution itself. Constitutional government cannot survive effectively in situations in which the constitution prescribes a pattern of behaviour or of conducting affairs that is alien to the customs and way of thinking of the people. When, as happened in many developing countries in the decades after World War II, a new and alien kind of constitutional democracy is imposed or adopted, a gap may soon develop between constitutionally prescribed and actual governmental practice. This in turn renders the government susceptible to attack by opposition groups. Such attack is especially easy to mount in situations in which a constitution has a heavy and detailed substantive content, when, for example, it guarantees the right to gainful employment or the right to a university education for all qualified candidates. In the event of the government being unable to fulfill its commitment, the opposition is able to call the constitution a mere scrap of paper and to demand its improvement or even its complete replacement. Such tactics often have succeeded, but they ignore the dual strategic function of the constitution. It is meant not only to arrange the offices of the state, in Aristotle’s sense, but also to state the goals toward which the authors and ratifiers of the constitution want their community to move.