Constitutional Rights on Paper, Challenges in Practice: A Study of Developing Democracies

Abstract

In the process of democratic governance, constitutional rights play an important role but the formal adoption of these rights does not always mean that practical realization of these rights takes place. The current study tries to identify the gap between the recognition of constitutional rights and their realization in practice in developing democracies. These gaps have been examined considering the areas of institutional protection, rule of law, access to justice, politics and socioeconomics. The research was conducted quantitatively in a cross-sectional form. Structured questionnaires were used as the research tools and the data obtained from 300 respondents with different demographic background and education level. Frequencies, percentages, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and multiple regression have been applied during analysis of data. It has been found that the awareness of the respondents about the constitutional rights was quite good with the average scores of 3.82; at the same time the respondents were aware about the legal means of protecting these rights to a lesser extent. Institutional protection had significantly positive relation with the realization of constitutional rights (r = 0.72, p < 0.01); then rule of law (r = 0.68, p < 0.01) and access to justice (r = 0.65, p < 0.01). During the regression analysis it has been revealed that institutional protection was the most important predictor of realization of constitutional rights (β = 0.39, p < 0.001), then rule of law (β = 0.31) and access to justice (β = 0.27). The model was able to explain 61% variance in the realization of practical rights. Political interference, insufficient implementation of the laws, socioeconomics and lack of access to justice are seen as the biggest barriers.

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