Fiddling with constitutions is usually a risky distraction

A man walks into a library and asks for a copy of the French constitution. “I’m sorry,” replies the librarian. “We don’t stock periodicals.” By one count, France has had 16 constitutions since its first in 1791. Its current version, which dates from 1958, has been amended dozens of times. But it is a beacon of stability compared with many other places. On September 4th Chileans will vote on a new charter. If it is approved, which it should not be, it would replace a document that has been amended 60 times since 1980. The rest of Latin America is equally keen on change. One calculation in 2009 put the average lifespan of a Latin American constitution at 16.5 years, compared with 77 in western Europe. A string of changes in the intervening years will have done little to close that discrepancy.