Introduction: Reflections on varieties of constitutionalism

This opening chapter explains the importance of exploring constitutions through an ideological prism to reckon with the normative outlook of such texts. It notes that it is possible, fruitful and arguably even necessary to accept that there are varieties in such an outlook that go beyond the classic liberal constitutional democratic paradigm. The chapter also offers an overview of the contributions included in the remainder of this edition of the Yearbook that help to diversify the toolkit that scholars may use in deciding on the appropriate adjective(s) to pair with the notion of constitutionalism. Finally, the chapter includes a call for scholars to be explicit about the conceptual approach that they adopt. More particularly, there would be a need to explain the reasons for recognising a given form of constitutionalism, why it is considered appropriate to use that form to describe or analyse the practice of constitutionalism in a certain country or group of countries as well as how various forms of constitutionalism relate to one another, which extends to engaging with the conceptions, applications and taxonomies put forward by others working on these topics.