Who to trust?

Who to follow?

Who to obey?

These questions are central to our systems of government. A government cannot function if it does not have authority – but that authority is often taken for granted.

Where does authority come from? What is it based on? How is it maintained – or lost? These are the questions which the Foundations of Institutional Authority project will explore.

Our project examines a question that is fundamental to systems of constitutional government: from where do public institutions get their authority?

Constitutional law tends to assume that authority comes from the law: that people comply with an instruction because it comes from an official designated by law.

But the reality is often much more complicated. An institution’s authority may be influenced by multiple factors: its history, identity, popularity, or levels of public trust. An institution’s authority can also change over time. It can become stronger – or it can collapse.

The goal of the research is to investigate this issue by talking directly to the people whose views shape institutional authority: political leaders, government officials and – most importantly – ordinary people. By asking people their views on the institutions that govern them, the project team hopes to build a better understanding of how constitutional systems actually operate.

The Foundations of Institutional Authority (FIAT) is an interdisciplinary research project based at the Centre for Constitutional Studies in the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin and funded by a European Research Council Consolidator grant.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 819877)

News & Events

Public Law, Publication

How to investigate a constitutional culture?: The case for the focus group method in comparative constitutional studies

By Eoin Carolan, Silvia Gagliardi, and Daniela Rodriguez Gutierrez Abstract This article makes the case for the use of focus groups as a method with particular relevance to the field of comparative constitutional studies. The article begins with a brief overview of the most common approaches to accounts of constitutional culture. It then explains how […]

March 13, 2025

Public Law, Publication

Public opinion as a foundation of de facto judicial independence?: lessons from Argentina and Uruguay

By Demian Iglesias Seifert, Daniela Rodriguez Gutierrez, and Eoin Carolan Abstract It is anecdotally clear from experiences in various countries that the perception that judicial independence is under threat can mobilise significant public opposition. The extent to which the public may oppose measures that impinge on judicial autonomy has clear implications for de facto judicial […]

March 13, 2025

Hiring

We are hiring

Applications are invited for a Research Assistant in Constitutional/Comparative Law on an ERC-funded project, The Foundations of Institutional Authority (FIAT) at the Centre for Constitutional Studies in University College Dublin. The project investigates the factors that contribute to the establishment and maintenance of constitutional governance and the rule of law across six case studies. The […]

February 27, 2025