Photograph by Aimen Zine / AP Photo, source: https://1url.cz/MJAbn

In 2026, Cambridge University Press will publish a monograph by Dr. Tereza Jermanová entitled Making Constitutions: Democratization and Authoritarianism in Tunisia and Egypt.

Making constitutions to replace authoritarian charters is challenging because it exposes political parties’ competing preferences for the ground rules of political competition and for how society should be organized. Yet democratization hinges on whether parties opposing authoritarianism can bridge these differences and reach a viable agreement on a new constitution. Making Constitutions: Democratization and Authoritarianism in Tunisia and Egypt (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press) explores how the rules and procedures that structure constitution-making – the constitution-making design – matter for whether polarized, anti-authoritarian parties manage to resolve their constitutional conflicts. It focuses on the role of inclusion, which is globally recommended as a “best practice” yet elusive both in its content and in the precise ways it affects outcomes. The book argues that inclusion in constitution-making must go beyond offering political parties a seat at the table and instead ensure that even smaller ones have a meaningful voice. However, it also explains why such designs are difficult to achieve: they do not emerge from neutral expertise but from intense struggles among political parties during the transition from authoritarianism.

To understand how constitution-making designs both originate and shape constitutional agreement, Making Constitutions compares Tunisia and Egypt, two cases in which the 2010–11 uprisings triggered genuine constitutional reform. While founders in Tunisia overwhelmingly approved the new text, clashes over the constitution in Egypt created a prelude to authoritarian renewal. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this book demonstrates that an inclusive design that granted all major anti-authoritarian parties a voice in Tunisia advanced agreement through two mutually reinforcing causal mechanisms: it encouraged cross-partisan input and buy-in in constitution-making and helped to transform interpersonal relationships among founders, reducing antagonism and prejudice. By contrast, Egypt’s non-inclusive process – giving smaller parties a seat but no voice – amplified constitutional conflicts, contributing to divides becoming insurmountable. Crucially, the book shows that the dissimilar transition contexts were pivotal in shaping constitution-making designs, sending Tunisia on a path toward inclusion and constitutional agreement while sharply limiting the prospects for an inclusive process in Egypt. Making Constitutions places constitution-making at the centre of democratization and argues that, to understand what allows inclusive designs to thrive and make a difference, they must be approached both as causes and outcomes.