It is a truism that politics influence constitutional law, and without knowing the political context constitutions cannot be understood. Or, as the editors of this research handbook put it: constitutional law is a semi-autonomous discipline (1). Although agreeing with their argumentation, that doctrinal legal scholarship is a sort of escapism from reality and therefore real understanding requires more than textual knowledge, it is still a methodical challenge to operationalize the political context. What is constitutional politics? Is it history? Is it a narrative? Is it about the influence of personalities or ideas? Is it about idiosyncratic coincidences or about trends and power structures? And the trickiest question of all is, what has the upper hand: politics over law or law over politics? The introduction is rich in ideas and full of references from antiquity to postmodernism, but it does not give a definitive answer to those questions or a template for the authors (5). Paul Blokker has a more sociological perspective (chapter 34), Margot Horspool a more biographic one (chapter 21), Peter L. Lindseth an institutional one (chapter 19), Juan F. Gonzalez Bertomeu a rather comparative one (chapter 14), Mark Tushnet (chapter 9) or András Sajó (chapter 5) a conceptual one, and Dariusz Adamski a behavioral one (chapter 4). So, in this respect, the monograph offers truly what is in its name: a research handbook pushing the boundaries and trying to deal with rather under-explored questions from diverse perspectives.
