Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies

David C. Williams
Law Building 274; IUB
(812) 855-6793
(812) 855-0555 FAX

The Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies (CCDPS) at Indiana University seeks to study and promote constitutional democracy in countries marked by ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other divisions. Founded and directed by John S. Hastings Professor of Law David Williams, the CCDPS will focus its initial work in Burma, Liberia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, training the reform leaders of these countries in constitutionalism, parliamentary process, and legal ordering. The center focuses its efforts on the constitutional aspects of democratic reform, enabling plural societies to peaceably provide meaningful self-governance to all their citizens. No issue is more significant to the well-being of the world's peoples.

To promote constitutional democracy, the CCDPS bridges the world of ideas and the world of affairs. The center brings together leaders of reform movements in countries struggling for constitutional democracy and university scholars who have expertise useful to those reformers. The center has a scholarship function (holding conferences and producing books, transcripts, articles, etc.) as well as an outreach function (training, advising, and consulting with leaders of democratic reform). In short, the center seeks to put the power of ideas to work in the world. It is committed both to understanding constitutionalism as an academic concept and to going out beyond the university to cities, jungles, mountains, and deserts where people are trying to make a better future.

Indiana University and the Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington have close relationships with democratic leaders in Burma and Liberia, as well as ongoing contact with reform leaders in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Law is especially relevant to democratic reform, but many other disciplines are also central to the center's work, as the successful inclusion of identity groups within a society's constitutional vision requires expertise in economics, political science, public management, labor relations, international affairs, and other disciplines. The center therefore has roots in the School of Law, but has gathered an interdisciplinary team of scholars from law, the IU Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, other IU departments, and universities abroad. With its institutional independence, rich intellectual resources, and extensive area programs, Indiana University offers an especially good home for such work.