Summary
Constitutions put controls on the people who run countries - but how are they created and how well do they work?
In ordinary times constitutional debate often seems an abstract business without very much relevance to the way we live our lives. But political turmoil can operate like an X-ray, lighting up the bones around which the body politic is formed.
Drawing on recent political events, Edward Stourton explores the effectiveness of the constitutions of the United Kingdom, the USA and France and asks are they doing what they were meant to do?
CONTRIBUTORS
Lord Peter Hennessy, Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary University of London
Alison Young, Professor of Public Law, University of Oxford
Professor Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Law School
Sophie Boyron, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham Law School
David S Bell, Professor of French Government and Politics, University of Leeds
Presenter: Edward Stourton Producer: Richard Fenton-Smith.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
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| 0:36.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | Thanks for downloading the Analysis Podcast, the program about the ideas behind the news agenda. |
| 0:45.4 | This week Edward Sturtin is exploring the ways in which three different countries go about controlling political power. |
| 0:52.0 | It's the C word. |
| 0:56.0 | The United States has one that's lasted for more than 220 years |
| 1:00.0 | and is rooted in the ideas of its founding fathers. |
| 1:03.0 | If men were angels, we wouldn't need government. |
| 1:06.0 | If angels were governing men, we wouldn't need any restraint on government. |
| 1:10.0 | But because we're trying to design a government for men governing men, we really have to have checks and balances. |
| 1:17.0 | The French love them, so much so that they've had no less than 15 of them. |
| 1:22.0 | The French have quite a reverence for the written word and at the same time when the Constitution |
| 1:29.3 | failed to deliver that |
| 1:35.0 | the perfect system, then they would scrap it and start again. And as for the British view of constitutions, |
| 1:38.0 | they remind me of that line of Aldous Huxley's |
| 1:41.0 | life is routine punctuated by aorges. Now our attitude to our |
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