in some work on term limits, as one indicator of the executive’s ability to maintain
power.
(^36) This variable captures the maximum number of years that an executive
could legally remain in office according to the constitution as it stood at the time
the executive ascended to office (without passing a constitutional amendment).
Finally, we use a measure that captures the executive’s ability to manipulate his or
her selection.^37 We refer to this measure as executive selection specificity, as it is
simply a measure of the level of detail provided for the selection and removal of the
head of state.^38 We assume that selection and removal procedures are more easily
manipulated if they are not specified in the constitution. Hence, authoritarian
leaders should have lower scores on this measure.
Figure 2. 2 presents the results. Interestingly, East Asia (along with South Asia) is
among the regions of the world which exhibit thelowestlevels of formal executive
power in their constitutions.^39 (Oceania has an even lower ranking.) In terms of
executive selection specificity and executive term, East Asia is in a relatively modest
intermediate position. On the index of legislative power, on the other hand,
East Asia exhibits the second-highest levels as of 2010 , behind only Eastern Europe.
Lest one think this is driven by the Leninist cases, note that even the liberal
democracies in Asia have high levels of parliamentary power, above the global
mean. In short, a purported emphasis on executive authority is not borne out by the
formal provisions of Asian constitutions. Instead, we see a good deal oflegislative
power as a hallmark of the region.
We also created several indices of rights protection. The first is an overall rights
index, which is simply the percentage of rights included in the constitution, out of a
total of eighty-one variables in the CCP survey. We also created sub-indices for civil
and political rights, criminal procedures, and economic rights. Each of these
indices indicates the percentage of that type of right in the constitution, out of
nineteen, twenty-five, and nineteen rights respectively.
The Asian Values proponents argued that Asian countries emphasized rights
over duties. One corollary of this argument is that one might expect fewer formal
rights in Asian constitutions than are found in other regions. Our data only
partly bear this out. The index of overall rights protection, involving eighty-one
rights, shown inFigure 2. 3 a–d, shows that Asian countries have roughly the same
level of rights protection as countries in the Western European/North American
(^36) Tom Ginsburg, Zachary Elkins, and James Melton, “On the evasion of executive term
limits” ( 2011 ) 52 William and Mary Law Review 1807.
(^37) Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, and James Melton, “The content of authoritarian consti-
tutions,” paper presented at University of Chicago Conference on Constitutions in
Authoritarian Regimes, October 21 – 2 , 2011.
(^38) Most of the components of this measure are not included in our overall measure of
constitutional scope.
(^39) While South Asian constitutions exhibit a significant change in these levels over time, the
East Asian levels are quite stable.