Ascriptive Constitutionalism : Principles, Forms, Consequences

Paul-Aarons Ngomo
Multiethnic societies are purportedly prone to conflict and much less
hospitable to democracy than their ethnically homogenous counterparts. By
and large, the normative theories of constitutional design that have achieved
authoritative currency as exemplars of conflict mitigating responses to the
centrifugal tendencies of ethnic diversity are predicated on two related
assumptions: (1) democratic political integration may take hold in such
unpredictable contexts primarily through distributive and institutional
mechanisms that recognize the various ethnic components of the state both as
cohesive political agents and units of allocative entitlements; (2) well ordered
constitutions are those that entrench and apportion rights based on ethnicity.
I term ascriptive constitutionalism all variants of constitutional design
endorsing such assumptions and set out to identity and normatively evaluate
their principles, forms, and assess their respective merits or defects based on
their consequences (implications) for long term political inclusion. Against
prevailing anti-universalistic views that reject political universalism as a
veiled domination of minorities I explore-in a sustained dialogue with Will
Kymlicka and Jrgen Habermas- the possibilities and potential pitfalls of a
reconfigured form of universalism that recognizes the fact of ethnic diversity
without ascriptive entitlements. In particular, I argue -with specific reference
to a set of multiethnic African societies- that political universalism is not
intrinsically incompatible with a politics of recognition that validates cultural
diversity.