Captured Constitutionalism: Post-Conflict Constitution-Making Between Inclusive Legitimacy and Elite Control

This article develops captured constitutionalism as an analytical lens for understanding how constitution-making processes perform inclusion while quietly entrenching elite bargains. Rather than treating the topic as a descriptive case note, the manuscript positions the politics of constitutional design in post-conflict transitions: between inclusive legitimacy and elite capture within wider debates on African political order, state formation, and institutional design. The paper is anchored in South Sudan, with comparative reference to Nepal and Myanmar, and it uses the topic brief's theoretical architecture to ask three linked questions: how do post-conflict constitutional processes that formally incorporate civil society and customary authorities in practice produce constitutions reflecting the preferences of armed elites and international mediators? What is the relationship between constitutional design choices presidentialism versus parliamentarism, proportionality, federalism and subsequent conflict recurrence rates in sub-Saharan Africa? How do external constitutional architects (UN, AU, IGAD, bilateral donors) shape post-conflict constitutional outcomes and with what accountability to affected populations? Methodologically, the article translates the proposed design into a publication-ready strategy built around comparative constitutional text analysis (comparative constitutions project); process tracing of south sudan's transitional constitutional processes (2005, 2011, 2015); interviews with constitutional commission members and civil society participants; comparison with nepal and myanmar.. It argues that the central analytical payoff lies not only in better explanation of the South Sudanese or regional cases, but in clarifying the conditions under which forma