Den Staat (ver-)fassen : Verfassungspolitik und Verfassungsglaube in Kirgistan und Myanmar

Abstract

People’s faith in constitutionalism has become an essential factor in how politics are shaped and performed all over the world. Especially in post-socialist and postcolonial countries constitutions have become icons of national identification but also a pivot and focal point of protest movements. As we are witnessing an increasing expansion of law into the political arena, this article argues that through a methodological shift in the investigation of constitutional faith – away from textual meaning and towards social interaction – we can also advance an ethnographic study of “the state” that moves beyond the idea of it being an abstract bureaucratic entity. Taking the examples of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and Myanmar in Southeast Asia, where constitutional reforms both have been key to political transformations since several decades, this article also shows the intricate relationship between law and religion. While in Kyrgyzstan constitutional faith has become pertinent, particularly in the aftermath of large-scale political conflict where it serves as a faith-based mode of conflict resolution, in Myanmar it is personally tied up with the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi, the former “icon of democracy”.