The origins & development of affirmative action in constitutional democracies

Most constitutional democracies now use some affirmative action policies to manage diverse populations. Yet these policies have proliferated in inconsistent ways and courts, even in countries with similar histories of discrimination, have responded differently toward such policies. In this dissertation, I advance two main arguments. First, I show that policymakers adopt affirmative action policies not just to redistribute economic resources, but also to redistribute political resources for their own benefit. This insight explains much of the observed variation in the adoption of affirmative action policies, and helps to explain why certain groups are deemed to deserve legal and policy benefits while others do not. Second, I advance an argument about judicial behavior which occurs in the context of constitutional interpretation. I show that the judicial, legislative, and executive branches often act as partners in elaborating the evolving constitutional positions of their regimes. This argument challenges existing theories of judicial behavior, which do not expect judges to change their policy preferences. Instead, I argue that judges often respond to changes in the policy positions of dominant political coalitions by introducing new doctrinal answers to support controversial affirmative action policies. Judges\u27 justifications for their commitments (or opposition) to affirmative action often change considerably over time, and I trace these changes alongside the changing preferences of elected policymakers. To test my argument, I introduce new evidence from India since 1950, South Africa since 1993, and the United States since 1968