¿Cómo pueden fracasar los procesos constituyentes?How can constitution-making processes fail?

This article introduces a symposium focused on the study of failed constitution-making processes, specifically those that attempted but did not succeed in replacing an existing constitution, termed "failures of activation." It highlights gaps in the literature, which has predominantly examined successful constitution-making, and argues for the importance of analyzing unsuccessful cases to better understand the causes and dynamics behind constitutional failures. The symposium presents diverse case studies from various historical and political contexts—including Israel (1950), Kenya (2005), Iceland (2012), Chile (2018 and 2022), Uruguay (1980), and Spain (1873)—to explore factors such as political polarization, elite fragmentation, exclusion of key actors, and crisis severity that contribute to failure. The article also distinguishes failures of activation from failures of implementation, emphasizing the need for further comparative and qualitative research to develop a more comprehensive theory of constitution-making success and failure.