The influence of constitutional courts on the process of transformation. A comparative perspective on Turkey and Germany

Even though one can speak of a recent boom of scientific work on Constitutional Courts in established democracies as well as in democratizing countries, comparative research on the institutional setting, the political impact and especially on the internal decision making processes of constitutional courts is still rare. The planned project will contribute to fill this gap by a systematic, in-depth comparison of the Turkish Constitutional Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court. The study will undertake extensive explorative research in order to establish a better understanding of the structural and functional logic of the institutions to be compared. These empirical findings will help to answer the principal question guiding the whole project: Under which structural, institutional and actor-centered conditions are Constitutional Courts able to develop a positive impact on democratic consolidation – and which factors are prone to weaken or even prevent this effect? It is therefore the main scientific object of the qualitative study to explain the differences in the Turkish and German Constitutional Court’s impact on democratic consolidation.
In the context of this project three subprojects will be conducted: Subproject I. investigates the basic function of constitutional courts within a rule of law setting; subproject II. examines in a quantitative study constitutional courts' influence on processes of societal transformation; subproject III. is devoted to an in-depth analysis of internal decision-making processes.