Economy
Iceland shows that a UK constitutional convention should involve politicians as little as possible
The people of Iceland drafted a new constitution. But their parliament has essentially ignored it.
After the financial crash of 2008, Iceland’s prospects looked promising in two respects. First, the government decided to call the IMF to the rescue following the Central Bank’s botched attempt to get Putin’s Russia to protect Iceland from the IMF’s ‘Kiss of Death’.
The Fund-supported recovery program served Iceland well. Second, up against the wall, Parliament gave in to the demands of the ‘Pots and Pans Revolution’, including the protesters’ demand for a new constitution to be drawn up by the people, not by politicians or their lawyers.
From 1944, when Iceland adopted what was essentially a translation of the Danish constitution from 1849, Parliament had consistently failed to keep its promise of constitutional reform. Without the crash, there would have been no new constitution.
Parliament took four key steps toward a new constitution. First, it appointed in 2009 a seven-member Constitutional Committee comprising mostly academics from a range of fields, including law, literature, and science, thus implicitly acknowledging that the constitution is not exclusively, and not even principally, a legal document, but primarily a social compact, a political declaration that supersedes ordinary legislation by virtue of the fact that the people are superior to Parliament.
Second, the Constitutional Committee was tasked with convening a National Assembly in 2010 at which 950 citizens, drawn at random from National Register, defined and discussed their views of what should be in the new constitution.
Third, the Constitutional Committee organized a national election of 25 Constitutional Assembly representatives to draft the constitution, a task that the Constitutional Assembly, renamed Council, completed within the four months assigned to it in 2011 by producing a partly crowd-sourced constitution bill, fully consistent with the conclusion of the National Assembly, and passing it unanimously with 25 votes to 0, a rare feat.
The elected council members included five professors, three other academics, four lawyers, and so on. Fourth, Parliament held a national referendum on the bill in 2012 where the bill was accepted by 67% of the voters and its individual key provisions were approved by 67% to 83% of the voters.
The bill was drafted from scratch, based on the 1944 constitution. The text was made public week by week for perusal by the public that was invited to offer comments and suggestions on an interactive website specifically designed for that purpose. Hundreds did. Many thoughtful and constructive comments were thus received from the public. An open invitation to all made it needless to invite representatives from special interest organizations to express their views, a clear departure from common parliamentary practice which has been, and remains, to invite special interest groups to influence, or even draft, legislation of interest to them.
The bill reflects a broad consensus in favour of change. It is, by design, firmly grounded in and fully consistent with the conclusion of the 2010 National Assembly, virtually without exception. This helps explain the 67% support for the bill in the 2012 referendum. The bill embraces continuity plus new provisions aiming to …