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Constitution on Ice

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  • Thorvaldur Gylfason

Abstract

This paper reports recent events in Iceland where the political agents of oligarchs didn‘t even bother to try to influence, let alone contest, a national referendum on a new constitution because, if they didn‘t like the result, they would simply find ways to nullify the outcome ex post. The paper reviews and explains the making of Iceland’s crowd-sourced constitution bill from 2009 to 2014, and also offers an explanation as to why the bill failed to be passed by Parliament, addressing various criticisms leveled against the bill along the way. It needs to be emphasized that these criticisms, whether well founded or not (and they are not), are irrelevant because Parliament held a national referendum on 20 October 2012 in which the bill and its key individual provisions were accepted by an overwhelming majority of the voters. A democratic nation cannot under any circumstances permit the outcome of national elections, let alone a constitutional referendum, to be fixed ex post, but this is what the Icelandic Parliament is at present trying to do, flirting with a farewell to democracy.

Suggested Citation

  • Thorvaldur Gylfason, 2014. "Constitution on Ice," CESifo Working Paper Series 5056, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5056
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5056.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gudrun Johnsen, 2014. "Bringing Down the Banking System," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-34735-0, December.
    2. Thorvaldur Gylfason, 2014. "Iceland: How Could This Happen?," CESifo Working Paper Series 4605, CESifo.
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    Cited by:

    1. Thorvaldur Gylfason & Per Magnus Wijkman, 2015. "Double Diversification with an Application to Iceland," CESifo Working Paper Series 5386, CESifo.
    2. Ling-Ling Li & Shi-Yu Wen & Ming-Lang Tseng & Anthony S. F. Chiu, 2020. "Photovoltaic array prediction on short-term output power method in Centralized power generation system," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 290(1), pages 243-263, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    constitution; democracy; Iceland;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)

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