—Erick Guapizaca Jiménez, University of Michigan, X: @erickfguapizaca
On November 16, 2025, Ecuador will decide whether to convene a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution, the twenty-first in its republican history. In Ecuador, whenever a government faces hardship, a common proposal is to reform or amend the constitution. When the crisis deepens or a substantial transformation is promised during an election campaign, the default response is to start over and write a new constitution from scratch.
This is precisely the argument presented by President Daniel Noboa in the decree calling for a Constituent Assembly. Noboa claims that the current Constitution prevents his government from effectively combating organized crime. Ecuador now faces one of the most alarming homicide rates in its history, part of a broader multidimensional crisis that has eroded public trust in institutions. Many of Noboa’s supporters blame the 2008 Constitution, celebrated for its strong human rights guarantees and its people-over-capital economic model, for limiting the government’s ability to respond decisively. This climate of fear and frustration has revived the old temptation to rewrite the nation’s social contract once again.
What does this recurring impulse to draft a new constitution every few years reveal about Ecuadorian constitutional culture? I argue that successive governments use Constituent Assemblies to constitutionalize their political and socioeconomic agendas while removing the institutional checks they blame for the country’s most pressing crises. The result is a cycle in which each new constitution becomes more closely aligned with the ruling majority and therefore more vulnerable to replacement by the next. When new administrations seek to distance themselves from their predecessors’ failures, they justify starting over by claiming that effective governance requires a new constitutional framework.
This post develops a three-part analysis. First, it examines the crisis that justified the 2008 Constitution and the political project it established. Second, it analyzes the current crisis invoked to justify a new constitution and what it seeks to dismantle. Third, it reflects on how this recurring cycle of constitutional change has affected governance and institutional stability in Ecuador.
The Promise of the 2008 Constitution: The One with 444 Articles
Ecuador has always been politically turbulent, but the most severe economic blow came at the end of the last century. During the 1998 crisis, the Central Bank issued excessive amounts of the national currency, the sucre, to cover a growing fiscal deficit and bail out failing banks, while oil prices collapsed by 75 percent, reducing state revenues. The resulting devaluation was so severe that by 1999, many banks ran out of reserves as depositors rushed to withdraw their savings and convert them into U.S. dollars. This chain of events ultimately led to dollarization. While this measure stabilized the economy by curbing hyperinflation, it also limited the government’s ability to respond to future crises. Over time, the loss of monetary sovereignty increased Ecuador’s vulnerability to external shocks and dependence on fiscal discipline and foreign capital. Socially, dollarization was devastating: thousands of Ecuadorians migrated, many lost their savings, and poverty and inequality rose sharply.
The 2006 electoral campaigns focused on preventing and overcoming that economic episode. In this context, Rafael Correa, a left-wing candidate who identified himself with the so-called socialism of the twenty-first century and rejected U.S. interventionism, was elected president. From his first day in office, Rafael Correa called for a Constituent Assembly to end what he described as a long neoliberal night dominated by economic and banking elites. His proposal emerged from the social and economic collapse of the late 1990s and early 2000s. In his 2007 inaugural address, he promised a new constitution that would prioritize human well-being over capital and promote an economy based on decent work, education, health, and regional economic sovereignty. The proposal advanced at every stage: nearly 80 percent of voters approved the referendum to convene the Assembly, his movement secured 80 of 130 seats, and the final text was approved with 60 percent of the vote. Correa later described the process as deliberative but criticized what he called “ecological and Indigenous infantilism” for prevailing in some areas.
The 2008 Constitution embodied Correa’s political and economic vision. The Constitution placed strategic sectors such as natural resources, telecommunications, transportation, and water under state control (arts. 313–315) and prohibited all forms of precarious work, including subcontracting and hourly contracts (arts. 326–329). It introduced an extensive catalogue of social, economic, environmental, and cultural rights, including rights to water, a healthy environment, cultural identity, and free public education, while extending protection to detainees, migrants, and even nature itself. Institutionally, it entrenched hyper-presidentialism by expanding executive powers and limiting legislative oversight. The president confirmed or expanded broad authority to propose or veto laws, dissolve the legislature, issue emergency decrees, and appoint key officials, including judges. To control other branches, the Constitutional Court also received wide powers to review legislation, amendments, and states of emergency, becoming a central political actor.
Seventeen years later, Ecuador is beginning to assess the legacy of that Constitution. In practice, it enabled Correa’s movement to dominate all branches of government and left an unbalanced institutional structure that persists today. During Correa’s term, he kept close allies in the Constitutional Court, the Electoral Council, overwhelming legislative majorities, and full control over oversight bodies. Noboa seeks to achieve this same level of control without any checks. The only remaining obstacle is the Constitutional Court, which, despite being composed of judges nominated by him and his right-wing predecessor, has struck down many of his initiatives. The broad rights it proclaimed remain largely unrealized, as shown by high informal employment, child malnutrition, and growing migration. Meanwhile, its state-centered economic model constrained foreign investment and limited Ecuador’s participation in global markets, revealing the gap between constitutional ambition and political reality.
The Current Crisis and President Noboa’s Corresponding Constitutional Promise
The very features that once defined the 2008 Constitution have become obstacles for President Daniel Noboa and his supporters. They argue that these rules have aggravated Ecuador’s security crisis, marked by the power and violence of organized crime groups. Noboa claims that the country’s economic constitution, closed to international markets and restrictive of business freedom, has produced an employment crisis that leaves youth vulnerable to criminal recruitment.
Noboa also argues that constitutional guarantees for persons deprived of liberty prevent decisive state action against crime.
Since taking office in 2024, Noboa has sought to reform the Constitution gradually, focusing on security and economic measures. Noboa achieved partial success through a referendum that authorized the extradition of Ecuadorian nationals and expanded the role of the armed forces alongside the national police. However, voters rejected his proposals to allow hourly employment contracts and to reinstate investment arbitration mechanisms. Several of his constitutional reform initiatives also failed to pass review by the Constitutional Court, which ruled that some could not proceed through the ordinary amendment process and required deeper forms of change, such as a partial reform or a full Constituent Assembly. Among the blocked initiatives were measures to make pretrial detention no longer an exception (2-25-RC), introduce chemical castration and a public registry for sex offenders (6-25-RC), establish political trials for judges of the Constitutional Court, eliminate the Citizen Participation Council and transfer its powers to the National Assembly and other oversight bodies (7-25-RC), and redefine the powers of the vice presidency (3-25-RC).
During his 2025 reelection campaign, Noboa’s government initially supported drafting a new constitution but later argued that reforms through the National Assembly could suffice, given that he had secured a majority through alliances with the Indigenous party Pachakutik. Once re-elected, two of his flagship bills, the Public Integrity Law and the National Solidarity Law, were struck down by the Constitutional Court on procedural grounds (52-25-IN and 51-25-IN). The Court limited its reasoning to formal defects, yet the episode reinforced Noboa’s perception that the judiciary constrained his authority.
Frustrated, Noboa launched a public campaign against the Constitutional Court, accusing its judges of enabling crime and publicly displaying their faces on billboards. Realizing that constitutional limits prevented the full implementation of his agenda, he concluded that a Constituent Assembly was necessary. Although he first attempted to bypass judicial review by sending his decree directly to the National Electoral Council, the Council referred it to the Court. The Court, under political pressure, ultimately authorized a referendum to decide on the proposal (11-25-RC and 11-25-RC/B).
The promise of change remains uncertain because Noboa has been vague in his communication with both the media and the public, nervously revealing only brief hints about what a new constitution might contain, contingent on the people’s decision to convene a Constituent Assembly. Yet, in the decree outlining the general reasons for calling the Assembly, and under pressure from journalists during live interviews, Noboa has signaled that the country’s economic model must be rebuilt, liberalized, and opened to foreign investment. At the same time, Noboa appeals to the ongoing security crisis, arguing that Ecuador’s broad guarantees for persons deprived of liberty and its rights-based criminal system have weakened state authority. The eventual assembly would also address the relationship between the central state and Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities, particularly regarding Indigenous justice and the right to protest. Several groups had engaged in a thirty-one-day strike against the government, which overlapped with the call for the referendum and the Constituent Assembly process. In terms of governance, he has stated that the Constitutional Court should become a chamber of the Supreme Court, losing its status as an apex court and becoming politically controlled and limited in its powers (here, here, and here). If successful, Noboa’s proposal would effectively curtail constitutional oversight over his legislative initiatives, future reforms, and states of emergency, leaving constitutional judges with only residual authority and exposing them to political oversight through impeachment proceedings.
Implications of the Successive Cycle of Constitutional Change
The two experiences with the proposed Constituent Assemblies show that Ecuador tends to shape its constitutions to match the political agenda of the moment, especially its economic model. The 2008 Constitution promoted a state-centered and nationalized economy that, at least in theory, prioritized workers and public control. In contrast, the economic model proposed by Noboa is the antithesis of the current one and, in his view, the remedy to Ecuador’s current crisis: an open, market-oriented model focused on foreign investment, flexible employment, and a reduced role for the state. Each model has been presented as the opposite of the one before it. But there are also governance matters that Noboa is eager to reshape, having learned that with fewer political checks, his agenda can move forward more easily. Under the 2008 Constitution, Correa consolidated control over all branches of government, entrenching a hyper-presidential system, which, in practice, only required political strategy to gain control over all branches of government and oversight bodies. Noboa, having learned from his clashes with the Constitutional Court, now targets it directly, seeking a faster and more limited deliberative process with fewer legislators. It is clear that, one way or another, he seeks to reinforce a form of presidentialism without meaningful checks, weakening the legislature by reducing deliberation and limiting representation from Ecuador’s less populated provinces. On security, the center of Ecuador’s current turmoil, Noboa calls for closer cooperation with the United States through military bases and a tougher stance on criminality. This marks a counter-response to Correa’s agenda, which sought to distance Ecuador from U.S. intervention in national sovereignty, especially military involvement, and prioritized issues other than security.
Noboa had a viable path for gradual reform supported by popular legitimacy, but lost alliances, leaving Ecuador polarized and reviving the idea, like in 2007, that a new constitution can address the security crisis. On November 16, Ecuadorians will vote to see if Noboa’s claim that the 2008 Constitution limits him resonates. This is the first step: if successful, eighty assembly members will negotiate and draft a new constitution. The political scene remains uncertain, as Correa’s movement could become a dominant force, imposing its agenda through negotiations and concessions. Voters might reject a Constituent Assembly altogether, which would damage the president’s legitimacy and force him to govern under the 2008 Constitution, limited by its economic and institutional controls.
Culturally, changing the constitution means replacing the government’s agenda with a new one and removing all obstacles to its implementation, without any real intention of creating a lasting social contract or setting the basic rules that should guide Ecuadorian society over time. What this process promises, instead, is that it will not be the last time such a change occurs. Whenever future governments feel constrained or cornered by an inherited agenda, they are likely to fall back into the same culture of rewriting the constitution.
Suggested citation: Erick Guapizaca Jiménez, Why Does Ecuador Keep Writing New Constitutions? Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Nov. 11, 2025, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/why-does-ecuador-keep-writing-new-constitutions/