Constitutional and institutional transplants — the movement of legal texts, organisational templates, procedures and governing ideas from one political context to another — have long been a central mechanism of political change. Bills of rights, electoral systems, independent central banks, constitutional courts, ombudsman offices, federal arrangements, transitional-justice mechanisms and, more recently, deliberative mini-publics, digital participation platforms and “integrity” agencies have all travelled across borders. So too have less liberal packages: emergency powers, surveillance architectures, party laws and models of managed elections. In an era of uncertain democracies, the question is no longer only whether institutions can be copied, but which models still travel, who promotes them, how they are adapted or hollowed out, and what they do to democratic quality in receiving contexts.
This open panel invites papers that examine transplants as processes rather than one-off acts of imitation. We welcome work on historical and contemporary transfers; colonial and postcolonial imposition; post-authoritarian and post-conflict constitution-making; Europeanisation and other forms of conditionality; South–South and authoritarian legal circulation; the role of international organisations, consultants, courts, parties and epistemic communities; and the local politics of translation, resistance and hybridisation. Contributions may focus on constitutions and public law, but equally on bureaucratic, electoral, fiscal, judicial, security or local-government institutions, as well as on informal rules that travel with formal designs.
The Congress theme makes the topic newly urgent. Consolidated democracies are themselves redesigning institutions under populist pressure, technological disruption and declining trust, even as they continue to export templates. Emerging and hybrid regimes selectively import “best practices” while insulating incumbents. Artificial intelligence, disinformation and private power generate demand for new regulatory transplants whose democratic effects remain poorly understood. Papers may be comparative or single-case, qualitative or quantitative, legal-doctrinal or political-sociological, normative or explanatory. They may celebrate successful borrowing, document failure and decoupling, or question the very language of “transplant.” The aim is to connect research on institutional transfer with the broader task of rethinking local, national and global democratic governance in a changing international system.
