Toppling Statutes?

In 1755, Corsicans ratified the constitution of their new republic, which was to prove a historical blip. The French conquered the island in 1768, but the constitution enjoys a minor celebrity as the first of a sovereign nation. The Enlightenment concept of a constitution was meant to challenge the unlimited power of kings and to institute democratic rule, but as Linda Colley has shown in The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen, many were the product of wars — and ­written by the ­victors. Today, all 193 member states of the United Nations have constitutions — even North Korea, Eritrea, and Russia. Most of these codified governing principles last only a couple of decades. According to one estimate, 935 ­constitutions were drafted between 1789 and 2005.

Constitutions are of great importance for democracies, which the political scientist Samuel Huntington suggested in 1991 have formed in three waves: from 1828 to 1926, from the Second World War to the mid-1960s, and...