CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | De Silva, Ashmi |
|---|---|
| Title | Constitutional Resilience and Limiting Power: A Comparative Study of Recent Executive Removals in South Asia |
| Summary | This essay examines the interplay between constitutional design and culture in enabling or obstructing the removal of Chief Executives (CEs) during crises, with a comparative focus on Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh between 2022 and 2024. It interrogates the accessibility and effectiveness of constitutional mechanisms for executive accountability and explores the conditions under which extra-constitutional approaches—such as violent protests can be justified to ensure constitutional resilience. The study defines constitutional resilience as the capacity of a constitution to recover from or cope with breakdowns emphasizing that resilience depends not only on formal rules but also on the constitutional culture. Through a close analysis of constitutional and legal texts, parliamentary processes, judicial interventions, and socio-political developments, the thesis argues that in contexts where constitutional pathways are blocked—whether by design, or constitutional culture—citizen-led extra-constitutional actions can function as expressions of constitutional protection rather than breakdown, safeguarding constitutional resilience in certain democracies. |
| Supervisor | Böckenförde, Markus |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/de-silva_ashmi.pdf |
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