Sample Essay Constitution-making has become an International and Comparative Exercise
Introduction
Constitution-making has become an international and comparative exercise in a way that it rarely was in the century before 1989. International in the sense that the involvement of experts and practitioners across state boundaries has been welcomed, indeed encouraged, to the point at which a new democracy that excluded foreigners entirely from its constitutional process might stamp itself as decidedly insular, even somewhat suspect. The post-1989 period has been a time of constitutional liberation. In this period, democracy has been marketed aggressively as a product that ought to be available to everyone. Even if purchases of off-the-shelf varieties are a bit dangerous and tailor-made versions are preferred, the implication is that those with less experience can profit from consulting those with more (Reynolds, 2002).
Western governments have been forthcoming with assistance although some, fearing being held responsible for the results, were slow off the mark; a spate of non-governmental organizations has sprung up to meet the demand and to create it where it was slow to arise; the United Nations and other international organizations have responded; and professional bodies such as the American Bar Association have assembled cadres of provision merchants, lawyers, and judges eager to dispense ready-made constitutional clauses on request. If the nineteenth was the century of Christian missionaries, the twenty-first may be considered as the century of constitutional missionaries (Reynolds, 2002). If it is true that designs are not generally adopted, that does not render constitutional design an unimportant subject. It is a naive view of the relation of ideas to institutions that concludes that ideas are unimportant merely because institutions do not reflect them fully or quickly. The difficult path of democracy itself, from 1680 to 1789 to 1989, makes this clear enough. Ideas are contested by other ideas, ideas are met with a variety of non-ideational barriers, and even ideas that survive these tests must go further: they must be put in adoptable forms, they must be legitimized by opinion leaders and opinion-leading states, and they must be seen to be in the interests of those who must approve their adoption before they find their way into institutions (Reynolds, 2002).
In the case of constitutional design, the battle of ideas is not over, non-ideational obstacles are strong, it is still early days in terms of constitutional iterations, the interests affected by adoption are not uniform, and retrogression is possible after adoption. As Nigerians looked to the United States in 1978, so, too, have many countries aimed to resemble Switzerland rather than Nigeria, even though their problems may have resembled Nigeria's more than Switzerland's. Success attracts admirers, although success may imply an easier problem that may have made possible the adoption of institutions that are held, in retrospect, to be responsible for the success. Severely divided societies need to look to other severely divided societies that have made some progress in reducing conflict, rather than to societies that are less severely divided, especially if the reduction of divisions in the less divided countries can causally be attributed to political institutions that antedate the onset of democracy (Reynolds, 2002).
Democracy is something that is not easily achieved and not easily maintained. Protecting democracy is one of the aims of the state. One of the means to protect democracy is through surveillance of the threats to the state. The paper will discuss about national security and the different threats to security. The paper will discuss surveillance as a means of gathering information on plans of the threats to the state. The paper will have a discussion on privacy as an issue on surveillance. Moreover the paper will attempt to prove or disprove the notion that surveillance is a necessary feature of democracy.
National Security
Generally security appears to represent a universal good that all in society strive to achieve. However, drawbacks can emerge when security becomes a primary or all-consuming emphasis. This focus can foster paranoia and a counterproductive focus on constantly unearthing potential threats to security or a drain of resources away from other societal values deemed important. Portraying concerns as security issues can elevate them into crises requiring extreme emergency measures that may be unwarranted and may provoke similar harsh responses from others. Furthermore, the attainment of too much security may promote a complacent contented-cow attitude that detracts from progressive advances, and may contribute to rigid, smug satisfaction with one's plight. Feeling safe and free from fear frequently involves exposure to minimal change. However, a major controversy exists over the kinds of change that most threaten security (Mandel, 1994).
Change generally seems most likely to be no threatening and legitimate when it is gradual and evolutionary, developed internally, and not directly imperiling survival or one's way of life; conversely, change seems most likely to be threatening and illegitimate when it is massive, swift, and radical, developed externally, and directly endangering survival or one's lifestyle. Furthermore, change associated with empowerment appears most likely to contribute to security, while change associated with loss of control appears most likely to contribute to insecurity. Because such evaluations of change have deep roots in patterns embedded in both psychological perception and societal culture, it appears unrealistic to expect that one could delineate in any overarching way exactly which kinds of change contribute to or detract from security (Mandel, 1994).
What is clear, nonetheless, is that not all major change constitutes a security threat. There is no underlying assumption here that it is optimal from a security standpoint to be open to all forms of change; too much openness may minimize perceived threat but may at the same time destroy core identity, just as too little openness may reinforce such identity but minimize resiliency and adaptability in a fluid environment. The central issues about responsibility for pursuing or maintaining security are how distant the security protector should be from those whose security it protects and how wide is the scope of security people seek. It is possible to argue that the best situation would be where everyone is responsible for providing his or her own security, with the security provider thus totally in tune with the needs of the security recipient and representing a foremost priority. However, not all are capable of or willing to provide their own security, and such a security scheme would be tremendously costly in terms of redundant drain on individual energies (Mandel, 1994). Therefore it is more usual for analysts to characterize security as a common good, where the group provides in a more efficient and balanced manner for the needs of its members. The difficulty here is that the larger, less cohesive, and more heterogeneous the group, the greater the likelihood that the security-providing structure would be out of touch with the security needs of individual members and more interested in protecting and preserving itself than the safety of its members. This second outcome underscores the pattern that many people appear unconcerned with maintaining or pursuing a more generalized international or even national security, and instead focus on personal security (Mandel, 1994). National security is a concern to all governments and states. The government has the duty to make sure that threats from within or outside the country can be prevented and thwarted. It has to ensure that the constitution it created will be respected by other people.
Threats to national security
Military threats to security have certainly not gone away in the years since the demise of East European Communism. However, although it persists in a number of forms, the Cold War's ultimate security threat of global nuclear Armageddon has receded and this has transformed defense policy in many states of the world. Whereas it could be said to be business as usual in much of Asia and Latin America and 'a change for the worse' in much of Africa, military security policies have changed in the states most affected by the Cold War, those of Europe and North America (Hough 2004). In Eastern Europe the former Communist states have either switched to the winning side or become preoccupied with new internal threats from secessionists. The western Cold War allies’ response to the successful avoidance of that war has been to show a far greater preparedness to get embroiled in new wars essentially of their choosing. These New World Order Wars and lesser military incursions have been prompted ready to respond to massive military threats is no longer a sufficient basis for the construction of many states' defense policy (Hough 2004).
As the Cold War has receded into history a more subtle strategy has been both necessary and possible for governments operating in relative peace. The management of security entails seeking to limit the risks likely to be encountered in the future as well as tackling imminent problems. The concept of human security accommodates the consideration of a wide range of threats to life, of which poverty is undoubtedly the most significant. Poverty kills directly in huge numbers, when people are unable to secure sufficient food to live, because they lack the economic means to purchase or produce it. Additionally, poverty is an underlying cause of human death by other security threats. Very different prescriptions exist about how best to lessen the human security threat posed by economic want (Hough 2004).
Undoubtedly the most influential idea to emerge from the conceptual widening of Security Studies in the 1990s by the Copenhagen School was that of societal security. This concept seeks to encapsulate the fact that the process of securitizing issues could sometimes be witnessed when what is thought to be being threatened is neither the state nor individuals within it, but a particular kind of society. Societal security concerns the ability of a society to persist in its essential character under changing conditions and possible or actual threats. This security is threatened when 'societies perceive a threat in identity terms. Security threats emanating from the environment present humanity with a number of political dilemmas. First, the threats are usually less clear-cut and direct than the other types of threat. Second, countering the threats is usually costly and requires significantly compromising economic interests. Third, the threats can often only be countered by globally coordinated political action. The scale of the human security threat posed by environmental change is difficult to quantify but it is undoubtedly significant and, to a large extent, avoidable given the political will (Hough 2004).
Global warming and ozone depletion, in the main, represent massive potential threats to large proportions of humanity but have not yet come to rival other human security threats. Disease has long been the biggest threat of all to mankind and, despite the unrelenting advances of medical science, looks set to continue to be for the foreseeable future (Hough 2004). The Black Death of the fourteenth century claimed more lives in five years than any military conflict before or since, while the great influenza epidemic of 1918-20 killed far more than the Great War that it closely followed. The Plague of Justinian, which started in sixth century Constantinople and then spread throughout the Mediterranean, was a classic 'national security issue since it precipitated the fall of the Byzantine Roman Empire. In addition, the threats posed by diseases, like some environmental problems, tend to be transnational and as such represent a security challenge not easily countered by a human race artificially sub-divided into independent, though not impervious, units (Hough 2004). Today Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) represents a far greater threat to life than armed conflict for most sub-Saharan Africans and for many millions more in all of the inhabited continents of the world (Hough 2004). The threats to national security may be man made or natural instances but governments are required to make sure that threats will not cause any problems to the state. Governments need to gather information that can make sure that democratic activities will continue.
Gathering Information
A distinction is to be made between government statistics and personal data gathered by agencies of the government for the purposes of administering a particular bureaucratic function. The distinction is a tenuous one because there is considerable evidence that data move back and forth between administrative files and those of statistical agencies, and more important, representations of normality and deviance derived from general statistics are used in bureaucratic decisions about the benefits or services that individuals are to receive. The distinction between government data and the data collected and maintained by private organizations is also difficult to maintain (Gandy Jar, 1993). Data gathered by government agencies find ready use by private firms, and private surveillance is increasingly relied on by government agencies to enhance their own investigations. Much of the public's concern about government data gathering has been focused on the system of files maintained by those government agencies responsible for law enforcement, and the protection of national security interests against domestic and foreign enemies (Gandy Jar, 1993).
It is important to note that the files gathered for purposes of surveillance are different from the files that are part of records of the criminal justice system which provides a national electronic index to the files of persons with any federal or state criminal history. Political surveillance is not the only purpose for which the government maintains files on individuals. The criminal justice system and the records of the courts have already been noted. The administration of the public welfare system represents a massive system of files and has been identified as a primary mobilizing force behind the expansion of file matching programs. Social scientists have expressed concern over the fact that more and more of the data generated by government is available only through electronic means, which may serve to limit professional as well as public access to those data (Gandy Jar, 1993). This concern is heightened by a concurrent tendency on the part of the federal government to implement a policy of privatization, which makes access to these data dependent on an ability to pay the third-party vendors who have been brought into competition with traditional government information sources. At the same time that the electronic storage and access to government data and statistics are made more efficient, a technical resource and skill barrier has been introduced that serves to concentrate power at the centers, of a network (Gandy Jar, 1993). Governments gather information for various purposes and they do it in different kind of ways.
Information society
Compared with that organization, a change is under way with the development of the Information Society. The latter does not imply, nor rest upon, any centralization. It may rather be associated with a dispersion or dissemination of the decision-making power. The evolution may be illustrated with the changes which are occurring in the labor markets, as a result of the development of people's information and knowledge based culture. In that sector, people are witnessing the possibility of workers increasingly performing duties away from traditional premises (Mars den, 2000). Workers are increasingly independent. They do not remain seated in the main office of their undertaking, but are dispatched to the client's premises, where they sometimes stay for months. Contacts are kept within the firm through electronic and telecommunications devices such as telephone, electronic mail or video conferencing (Mars den, 2000). The primary concerns for today’s techno-enthusiasts are matters such as virtual reality, the emergence of the information society, and what life will be like in cyberspace, and the most talked about subject tends to be the Internet and its potential for enhancing information exchanges, fostering electronic communities, and ending education as people know it. While some of the vocabulary has changed since the 1980s, the faith in technology remains marked. Today’s commentators no longer find themselves awed by computer numerical control, robotics, and the automated factory; nowadays techno-boosters consider interactivity, multimedia and global connectivity to be the most powerful juggernaut in the history of technology (Robins, & Webster 1999).
A most striking recent tendency has been to announce the arrival of a new epoch, one which might be designated an information age, which shifts attention away from the role of technologies while promoting information as the axial feature of the new age. While this group of thinkers tends to presume that advanced Information and Communication technologies (Its) are an important element of the information age, it is clear that the emphasis on the transformative power of information puts it far above the merely technological. Information as a concept has become, for a wide variety of commentators, capable of signaling the most profound social change, so much so that the information society is nowadays a routine part of the lexicon of politicians, business leaders and university heads. The appropriation of information and information resources has always been a constitutive aspect of capitalist societies quite outside of any technological context (Robins, & Webster 1999). The appropriation of knowledge or skill in the factory may operate solely through hierarchical control. Similarly, nation states functioned effectively for generations without benefit of computer technologies. Organizational structures culminating in bureaucratic institutions may establish effective mechanisms for the control and management of information resources. The gathering, recording, aggregation, and exploitation of information can be and has been achieved on the basis of minimal technological support. The prevailing tendency to consider information and information technology chiefly in terms of economic growth, productivity, and planning, again puts it in a strongly technical, calculative, and instrumental context (1999). Information societies make sure that information for different purposes is readily available. As mentioned in earlier discussions one important thing done by governments to prevent threats is to gather relative information. To gather information they use surveillance techniques.
Surveillance and its use at present
Surveillance has spilled out of its old nation-state containers to become a feature of everyday life, at work, at home, at play, on the move. So far from the single all-seeing eye of Big Brother, myriad agencies now trace and track mundane activities for a plethora of purposes. Abstract data, now including video, biometric, and genetic as well as computerized administrative files, are manipulated to produce profiles and risk categories in a liquid, networked system. The point is to plan, predict, and prevent by classifying and assessing those profiles and risks (Lyon, 2002). A key trend of today's surveillance is the use of searchable databases to process personal data for various purposes. This key is not technological, as if searchable databases could be thought of as separate from the social, economic, and political purposes in which they are embedded. Rather, the use of searchable databases is seen as a future goal, even if, at present, the hardware and software may not all be readily available or sufficiently sophisticated. The point is that access to improved speed of handling and richer sources of information about individuals and populations is believed to be the best way to check and monitor behavior, to influence persons and populations, and to anticipate and pre-empt risks (Lyon, 2002).
There is a sense in which new technologies are employed to compensate for losses incurred through the deployment of other technologies. New information, and especially communication technologies and improved transportation, have enabled many things to be done at a distance in the past half century. An unprecedented stretch in relationships allows parties to engage in dispersed production-of everything from automobiles to music-administration, interpersonal communication, commerce, entertainment, and, of course, war. Relationships no longer depend on embodied persons being co-present with each other. The older metaphors redolent of heavy-handed social control, seem somehow less relevant to an everyday world of telephone transactions, Internet surfing, street-level security, work monitoring, and so on. And indeed, it seems appropriate to think of such surveillance as in some ways positive and beneficial, permitting new levels of efficiency, productivity, convenience, and comfort that many in the technologically advanced societies take for granted. At the same time, the apparently innocent embedded nests of surveillance in everyday life does raise some important questions for sociological analysis. The surface-level associations of surveillance with the containment of risk may at times obscure the ways that expanding surveillance may actually contribute to as well as curtail risks (Lyon, 2002).
Surveillance extends from the use of obtrusive methods such as electronic recording of information through telephone tapping and interception of electronic messaging, closed circuit television, video monitoring, and genetic testing by means of fingerprinting, DNA analysis, and retinal identification, to the use of less obtrusive measures such as routine gathering of data on population in the name of governance and administration, as for example through census taking and survey research. The variety of surveillance techniques in which monitoring, recording, counting, and categorizing of people have affected the identity of individuals as workers, hospital patients, citizens, refugees, students, prison inmates, travelers, and neighborhood residents (Lyon, 2002). For different people and institutions surveillance has various uses and it provides information needed by society but some have doubts about its use because they believe that it violates privacy.
Issues on privacy
The heated battle over privacy today is of very recent origin. It is only since the 1950s and 1960s that there has been a growing reaction to the increasing power and control of big business and government to create a conformist society. The technological revolution, the social dislocations of modem society, and the pervasiveness and invasiveness of the media has escalated this concern since the 1970s, culminating in the privacy crisis of today. In the 1960s the privacy battle became even more intense (Scott, 1995).
As more people experienced their privacy being invaded, more fought back by taking their cases to court. There were many reasons for this trend. First, the mid-1960s were characterized by a growing antiestablishment political consciousness and a do-your-own-thing philosophy, reflected in the counterculture and protest movements that swept countries. Many people were more vocal in expressing their individuality (Scott, 1995).When governments and other people use surveillance to gather the information they need there is a big chance that might violate other people’s privacy. Violation of privacy involves knowing another person’s phone number, email address and listening to telecommunication conversations. Violation of privacy usually leads to court cases because everyone wants to make sure that their individuality is expressed and their personal life is not known to the public.
Surveillance as a feature of democracy
Surveillance may violate the privacy of individuals and it may create a person’s loss of individuality but people should not be afraid of other people knowing about their personal activities because it might give them a reprieve from suspicions by the government and other people. Surveillance is needed by the society so that any internal and external threats by different minded people in the society will not be successful. With the freedom brought about by democracy comes the responsibility of providing relative information to the government, this information can help in creating measures to defend the state. Democracy will not be successful if information regarding threats towards it cannot be known ahead of time. The sense of democracy is laid to waste when the government cannot create means to defend it. Having no privacy is not good for a country but having too much privacy can lead to suspicions from people in the environment.
Conclusion
Democracy is something that is not easily achieved and not easily maintained. Protecting democracy is one of the aims of the state. One of the means to protect democracy is through surveillance of the threats to the state. The threats to national security may be man made or natural instances but governments are required to make sure that threats will not cause any problems to the state. For different people and institutions surveillance has various uses and it provides information needed by society but some have doubts about its use because they believe that it violates privacy. When governments and other people use surveillance to gather the information they need there is a big chance that might violate other people’s privacy. Violation of privacy usually leads to court cases because everyone wants to make sure that their individuality is expressed and their personal life is not known to the public.
