If a country’s constitution changes constantly, it soon becomes as if the country had no constitution at all. This does not necessarily doom a country, but it makes the country’s government less stable.
A constitution is, in essence, the ground rules for a country’s government. It is supposed to set out the basic structure of the government and the basic rules for what a government can and cannot do. For example, the United States Constitution sets up a governmental system with three branches of government and federalism. It further establishes rules such as the rule that the government cannot infringe on your right to free speech and the rule that it cannot try you twice for the same crime.
A constitution is important for a country because (if it is a proper constitution) it lets us know what our governmental system will be like. It gives us a sense of security because we always know what to expect, in broad terms, from our government. We do not know everything about what the government will do. It might raise or lower taxes. It might change the rules on immigration. It might get us into or out of a given war. All that said, however, we still know that there are certain rules that will always be there and that gives us a sense of security.
If a country’s constitution changes constantly, the country’s people will lose this sense of security. They will no longer have the feeling that their system of government will remain essentially the same. Imagine if tomorrow the US Constitution changed and the states no longer had rights. Then two months from now Congress became unicameral. And a few months after that the states got their powers back again. Americans would no longer feel as if they knew what their government would be like. This would make them nervous and less secure. The country would not necessarily fall apart, particularly in the short run, but it would clearly become less secure and less stable. This is what will happen if a country’s constitution changes too often.
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