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From Citizen Input to Elite Legitimation: The Logic of Will-Confirmation in Constitution-Making

Matthew J. Martin

Comparative Politics2026https://doi.org/10.5129/001041526x17731675177333article
ABDC A
Weight
0.50

Abstract

Constitution-making is cast as a state-society dialogue, with public consultation sustaining the legal fiction that “the people” write the social contract. I introduce will-confirmation—the interpretive practice whereby elites utilize underdetermined public input to legitimate representative claims. It has two modes: constructive (synthesizing ambiguous input into alignment) and dismissive (excluding contrary input as unrepresentative). Across thirty-seven interviews from Chile’s Constitutional Convention and Cuba’s Drafting Commission, I show how will-confirmation operates amid crises of representation. In Chile, drafters claiming to embody the people produced parallel monologues, aggravating rather than resolving a lack of elite consensus. In Cuba, drafters and regime-loyal intermediaries filtered input into centralized coherence, obscuring rather than remedying the absence of ideological pluralism. Will-confirmation reduced consultation to self-legitimation rather than a check on interpretation.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5129/001041526x17731675177333

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@article{matthew2026,
  title        = {{From Citizen Input to Elite Legitimation: The Logic of Will-Confirmation in Constitution-Making}},
  author       = {Matthew J. Martin},
  journal      = {Comparative Politics},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5129/001041526x17731675177333},
}

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From Citizen Input to Elite Legitimation: The Logic of Will-Confirmation in Constitution-Making

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

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