Chapter V: Data Sources and Methodology
2 Methodology
As mentioned above the data available was very limited and in order to carry out the research with the limited amount of data, a detailed methodology is to be designed.
This study will be carried out as a single subject case study which focuses mainly on 3 research questions. It is an economic analysis of a historical event (constitution-making) that has long term implications. Since the approach used to analyse the event is individualistic so logically the first thing to do is to analyse the preferences and interests of all the actors involved.
As the event under analysis can no longer be observed or recreated, the possibility of using many qualitative research data collection methods (observation, focus groups) is no more possible. Therefore, secondary data collection methods will be applied for this study mainly focusing on the study of the records and documents. These documents can be the debates and discussions of the assembly records as well as the official archival documents.
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Other sources of use may be the personal documents of the members, or other relevant people (historians, journalists) in that time period. These may include letters;
auto-biographies etc. Another important source could be the print media or audio or video records of that time. In short, the sources used will be mostly secondary. When and where possible interviews will be arranged of any member, journalist or relevant person who can provide important information.
First step would be to arrange a list of name of members of constitutional assembly and then to create short biographies of all these members. These would be our Units and treating each member as an individual unit in the event will generate a large number of Observations. These observations are about 80 i.e. as many as the number of the members of assembly.
One thing worth mentioning came out in initial reading i.e. a constitutional assembly was formed at first soon after the country declared independence and was dissolved because it failed to draft a constitution. Then a second constitution-making body was created that finally delivered the constitution. For purposes to understand the case better, detailed information would be provided to explain why such a measure had to be taken. And what was the interest of the executive who took this step so a thorough process tracing would be done. However for generating results only the second assembly would be considered because the focus is on the roll calls of the selected constitutional rules, therefore detailed backgrounds of only the members in the second assembly would be provided.
A constitution consists of two types of constitutional rules; some are general rules which are usually discussed in all constitutions, while some are specific rules which are only relevant in case of a specific country. These specific rules are based on the problems of society and try to alleviate some issues eg a religious society may want the constitution to be in line with religion, a society filled with discrimination may want to give specific representation to a minority group or minority gender. These kinds of rules will not be uniform all over in the world’s constitution, but a choice of a president/prime minister will be in almost all constitutions. They are termed as interest-specific and general constitutional clauses respectively (McGuire, 1987). The interest specific rules are prone to manipulation by interest groups more commonly
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than the general rules. For the time being only the endogenising of some general constitutional rules is pondered upon. As many specific and interesting interest specific constitutional rules were seen so they were accommodated in the study along the way.
For now, the roll call on the following constitutional rules is taken into account: These will serve as our dependent variables:
1. Structure of Government (Presidential vs. Parliamentary) 2. Number of Houses
3. Federalism
4. Judicial Independence 5. Procedures of Amendments 6. Human Rights
To know a member’s Institutional Interests, we would like to know his education, profession, main sources of income etc. To know this it can also be noted that at the time of his tenure in assembly was he member of a legislature or executive or judiciary etc, thus his institutional linkages will be probed. Similarly to know if he is influenced by foreign constitutional models it might be relevant to note if he has been working or studying in foreign universities. To know whether a person is in minority groups it’s relevant to note his ethnic, linguistic and religious background. Similarly gender would be noted as women are expected to vote in favour of broad human rights clauses. In the end a person’s political party affiliations would be noted. To know his strong political presence it must be seen if he is seen as a party’s main political figure or not. Strength of political party can be seen as seats won in the last election, and also by number of votes won. All these are presented in the following table and are used as Independent variables.
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Independent Variables
Gender Religion Ethnic Origin Geographical Origin
Political Party Political Presence
Education Profession Institutional Linkage
Language
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