Following a busy and successful first year, Constitutional Transitions is about to enter the second year of its multi-faceted partnership with its current client, the West Asia and North Africa Office of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA).
International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization composed of 27 member states, is a recognized leader in the promotion of sustainable democracy worldwide, and is active across the region, with programs in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Jordan. The partnership with Constitutional Transitions bridges scholarship and practice by harnessing the expertise of the world’s leading global law school to support constitutional transitions on the ground.
The partnership has three elements. First, students in the Constitutional Transitions Clinic provide “back office” research support to International IDEA on questions of constitutional design that are central to ongoing processes in the Middle East and North Africa region. In the partnership’s first year, students produced reports on constitutional courts, legislative-executive relations, and political party finance law. For the second year, the areas of focus will include anti-corruption mechanisms, the management of natural resources, and decentralization of government.
Second, the partnership sends students affiliated with NYU School of Law to International IDEA’s West Asia and North Africa Office to serve as short-term field researchers. This past summer, Constitutional Transitions deployed three student researchers to International IDEA’s Cairo office; read about their experience here.
A third and novel component is that Constitutional Transitions dispatches faculty experts to serve as foreign constitutional experts for various International IDEA projects. In the past year, Professor Sujit Choudhry and Richard Stacey have advised on projects in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.
A full description of the Constitutional Transitions and International IDEA partnership is available here.