@article{2018:beyer:den_staat_,
title = {Den Staat (ver-)fassen. Verfassungspolitik und Verfassungsglaube in Kirgistan und Myanmar},
year = {2018},
note = {People’s faith in constitutionalism has become an essential factor
in how politics are shaped and performed all over the world.
Especially in post-socialist and postcolonial countries constitutions
have become icons of national identification but also a pivot and
focal point of protest movements. As we are witnessing an increasing
expansion of law into the political arena, this article argues that
through a methodological shift in the investigation of constitutional
faith - away from textual meaning and towards social interaction - we
can also advance an ethnographic study of “the state” that moves
beyond the idea of it being an abstract bureaucratic entity. Taking
the examples of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and Myanmar in Southeast
Asia, where constitutional reforms both have been key to political
transformations since several decades, this article also shows the
intricate relationship between law and religion. While in Kyrgyzstan
constitutional faith has become pertinent, particularly in the
aftermath of large-scale political conflict where it serves as a
faith-based mode of conflict resolution, in Myanmar it is personally
tied up with the figure of Aung San Suu Kyi, the former “icon of
democracy”.},
journal = {VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee},
pages = {35--52},
author = {Beyer, Judith},
volume = {51},
number = {1}
}