Part I History, Methodology, And Typology, Ch.3 Carving Out Typologies and Accounting for Differences Across Systems: Towards a Methodology of Transnational Constitutionalism

The purpose of this chapter is to outline and to assess the role of ‘typologies’ in comparative constitutional thought. At the outset, it is necessary to clarify whether we are to be concerned with a substantive comparison of constitutions as exercised—for example—by Aristotle in Politics, or with a formal one, which focuses on distinctions between written and unwritten, traditional and revolutionary constitutions and their complementing institutional orders, as has become routine in modern-day political and constitutional thought. Comparisons in both directions...