How Often Each Constitution Has Been Amended

In one line

The United States has amended its Constitution twenty seven times in two hundred and thirty seven years and India more than a hundred times in seventy five, and the reasons are structural rather than cultural.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the frequency of constitutional amendment depends on the length and specificity of the text, on the demandingness of the procedure, on the number of institutional actors whose agreement is required, and on whether other routes to constitutional change are available.

The counts, stated carefully

United States. Twenty seven amendments since 1789. The first ten were ratified together in 1791. Nothing has been ratified since 1992, and that one had been proposed in 1789.

India. More than a hundred amendments since 1950, beginning with the First in 1951.

Germany. More than sixty since 1949, notwithstanding article 79(2)'s two thirds requirement in both chambers.

Switzerland. Very frequent. The 1874 Constitution was amended well over a hundred times before its total revision in 1999, and the 1999 text has been amended many times since.

Ireland. About forty amendment referendums have been held since 1937, of which a substantial number were rejected.

Canada. Few, and the amending procedures in Part V have been used sparingly since 1982.

An answer should give the American and Indian figures, which are settled, and describe the others as frequent or infrequent rather than risking a number that has moved.

The four reasons

One: length and specificity. A constitution that contains matters other systems leave to ordinary law must be amended when those matters change. India's Seventh Schedule, its reservation provisions and its provisions on the salaries of judges are examples.

Two: the demandingness of the procedure. Article V requires two thirds of both Houses and thirty eight States. Article 368 requires a special majority in each House and, for some matters, half the States.

Three: the number of actors. The American procedure requires the agreement of many institutions; the Swiss requires one electorate on one day.

Four: whether other routes exist. Where amendment is closed, interpretation does the work. The American Constitution's meaning has changed enormously since 1937 without a word being altered.

What the amendments have been about

Counting alone treats a reorganisation of States and the abolition of slavery as equivalent, so the subject matter is part of the answer.

United States. The Bill of Rights in 1791; the abolition of slavery and the Reconstruction Amendments of 1865 to 1870; the income tax and the direct election of senators in 1913; prohibition and its repeal; women's suffrage in 1920; presidential terms and succession; the vote at eighteen in 1971; congressional pay in 1992. Almost every one is structural or about the franchise.