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2010 – 2012: The “Crowd-Sourced Constitution”

Mynd: Wikipeadia: Haukurth 

This section documents the remarkable constitutional revision process of 2010 to 2012, a process that produced what has sometimes been called The Crowd-Sourced Constitution. In a 2012 referendum Icelanders agreed that this document should form the basis of a new constitution. To date, Alþingi has not ratified the crowd-sourced constitution.

The call for a new constitution was one of the demands that arose from the protests following the Icelandic financial crisis of 2008, also referred to as the Pots and Pans Revolution (Icelandic: Búsáhaldabyltingin). Although Alþingi intended to write a new constitution in it’s first term after the declaration of independence from Danmark in 1944, the only substantial revision happened when the chapter on human right’s was revised half a century later. The demand for a new constitution gained new momentum and urgency with the financial crisis since many felt that government and the democratic system had failed and needed an overhaul. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the leader the Social Democrats, and a long time advocate for constitutional change became Prime Minister of Iceland’s first Left wing government after the elections held late April 2009, and her government decided to convene a constitutional assembly to discuss changes to the Constitution.

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