is a legal analysis of the complex interaction between constitutional norms and institutional and societal forces. Sierra Leone, a new Commonwealth state once regarded as a model of British parliamentary democracy in West Africa, offers both an extraordinary constitutional setting and a fertile source of material for legal analysis in that it has not escaped the wave of revolutionary change and constitutional instability that has swept the new Commonwealth after independence. In this book the author examines, from a comparative perspective, the complex interaction of constitutional standards and institutional and societal forces as a constraining influence on constitutional democracy in Sierra Leone. This book illustrates Sierra Leone's experience with one of constitutional law's most fundamental and enduring problems—the delicate relationship between its legal and political components.