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Unit 6: Socio-Economic Bases and Salient Features of the Constitutions

colossus, regardless of the attitudes taken towards it, is a serious chink in anyone’s intellectual Notes
armoury.”
A comprehensive study of the Swiss political system in a work on major modern political systems
has certain pertinent reasons of its own. Though Switzerland is a small and land-locked country
of Europe, her political institutions occupy a very significant place in the sphere of major
constitutional systems of the world. Indeed, the Swiss system has successfully integrated a
population characterised by social, linguistic, religious and cultural diversities into a united nation
and demonstrated the possibility of close co-operation between peoples who at one time “were
independent of each other politically and who today are widely divided by language and religion.”
Not only from a religious or ethnic but also from the political standpoint, the Swiss constitutional
system is peculiarly important. It is primarily due to the fact that throughout the ages Switzerland
has been a republic; the monarchist ways of thinking have been alien to the people. The Swiss,
unlike the British or the French, has no understanding for the powers and privileges of a ruler,
and thus for him the state “is an affair of all citizens, and its guidance is not to be hereditary, nor
is it to be entrusted to an elected individual.”

6.1 Constitutions of UK, USA, Russia, France, China and Switzerland

English Constitutionalism
The term ‘constitution’, when applied to a political society, embodies both a physical and a legal
conception. In the former sense, it refers to the totality of constituent elements that form the
physical make-up of the state as the factors of population and territory including the institutions
of political machinery or administrative mechanism. But in the latter sense, it refers to a sum-total
of statutes, charters, documents, and all written as well as unwritten (conventional) rules that
constitute the organic public law of the state. Obviously, while in the former sense, the constitution
becomes analogous to the science dealing with some phenomenon of nature, in the latter sense, it
constitutes a field of important study in the domains of law and politics. And thus inspite of the
fact that the term ‘constitution’ has been variously defined by different writers according to varying
conceptions which they hold, it is indisputable that the constitution is a legal instrument which
“embodies the more essential parts of the organic public law of the state.” Such a definition of the
term ‘constitution’ may create some difficulty for a student of constitutional law when he is
concerned with a study of the English constitution. Hence, it should be added that the constitution,
as Dicey observed, refers to all rules and regulations which directly or indirectly affect the
distribution or exercise of the sovereign power of the state.”

The British Constitution is unwritten in one single document, unlike the constitution in
America on the proposed European constitution, and as such, is reformed to as an
unclassified constitution in the sense that there is no single document that can be classed
as Britain’s constitution.

While constitution refers to a body of rules that are essential for every political community,
constitutionalism desires appropriate limitations whereby power is proscribed and procedure is
prescribed. In other words, constitutionalism has its libertarian as well as procedural aspects.
While it is required that the state shall perform such and such functions, it is also made obligatory
that it would not transgress its defined area of authority. Thus, the directions are set forth
determining the manner in which the policy shall be formulated and implemented within the
jurisdiction of the state. “Constitutionalism, then, governs two separate but related types of
relationship. First, There is” the relationship of government with citizens. Second, there is the
relationship of one governmental authority to another, the dichotomy is not sharp, for the latter
type of relationship is regulated largely as a means of increasing the effectiveness of the control

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