This course argues that constitutions are the foundation of prevailing institutional arrangements in democratic countries. As a result, changing a constitution has significant implications on all institutions of a country.

The course has two goals: First, understand constitutional amendment provisions, which facilitate or inhibit institutional modifications in a country. Second, study the most significant institutional provisions included in most democratic constitutions, like regime types (presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary systems), electoral systems (plurality vs proportional, single vote vs. multiple vote systems, with their consequences on party systems), structure of parliaments (unicameral vs. bi-cameral), agenda control of legislation, majority vs. supermajority decisionmaking.

The method of analysis is rational choice: we will assume that political actors are rational, and that each one of them tries to do the best possible given existing institutional constraints, and the behavior of other actors. We will see that this assumption leads to the conclusion that institutions (first of which the constitution) affect political outcomes in systematic ways. We will focus on what political outcomes will be produced by different institutions. The conclusions in turn, will help us engineer the desired institutions.