Efficient Secrets

Constitutions provide the basic laws and principles of government for modern states. They determine the powers and duties of those who govern, and guarantee rights and freedoms to those who are governed. Yet few countries politics can be understood through these documents alone. Constitutions have, in Walter Bagehot’s famous formulation, “secrets” which don’t always align to “the traditional theory, as it exists in all the books”. This podcast looks at the different efficient secrets of democratic constitutions, as well as the challenges to them, to gain deeper insights into the unstable and fractious politics of the twenty first century – a time when democratic politics finds itself under increasing attack. The podcast is part of a broader project, the Oxford Constitutional Studies Forum, which brings together scholars of law and politics to understand the challenges faced by liberal democracies across the world today.

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Efficient Secrets

Efficient Secrets Season 1: Democratic Backsliding

January 30, 2022 • Oxford Constitutional Studies Forum • Season 1 • Episode 1

In this season of the Efficient Secrets podcast, I’m going to be talking to experts at the University of Oxford, along with some other guests, about how constitutional studies can help us understand democratic backsliding – the increasingly prevalent process by which consolidated democracies begin to degrade the rights and freedoms supposedly guaranteed by their constitutions.

This podcast is part of a broader project, the Constitutional Studies Forum, which will bring together scholars of law and politics to understand the challenges faced by liberal constitutional democracies across the world today.

In this first episode, I sat down with the founders of the Forum – Professor Petra Schleiter from the department of politics, and Professor Nick Barber from the faculty of law – to talk about aims of the forum and why we’ve chosen democratic backsliding as our first topic.

Music: Old Street by ORANGE PRODUCTION, licenced by Tunetank