Congolese federalism tested by comparative law

The January 20, 2011 revision of the Congolese constitution of February 18, 2006 violates the federal character of the state. With regard to federal autonomy, the legal obligation, as Léon Duguit stated, is imposed on governments to respect it, and bound by this legal obligation, they cannot suppress it either by an ordinary law or even by a constitutional law. However, there always comes a time when the law stops in the face of force. The act by which the central government suppresses the autonomy of a federalized territory would be an act of force, and never an act of law, in whatever form this suppression takes place, because this act would be the violation of a legal obligation, that is to say, a coup d’état ( Leon Duguit, L’État, les gouvernants et les agents, preface de Frank Moderne, Dalloz, Paris, 2005, pp. 758-759). A recurrent phenomenon in our young democracies! Why is this so? Beyond the study of the Congolese constitution of February 18, 2006, this book poses the whole problem of the future of constitutionalism, understood as a technique for limiting powers, in young democracies.