A Study On The Constitutional Culture

The constitutional culture refers to people's faith, concept, attitude and emotion towards constitution, and their choice of constitutionalism influenced by them. Among them, faith, motion, and evaluation of the cognitive subject of constitution play a crucial role in the implementation and development of constitution. The constitution must be believed in, otherwise it is but an empty shell. It is of great importance to establish the faith in constitution for the formation of constitutional culture and the achievement of constitutionalism.Modern and contemporary constitution and constitutionalism are products of historical development of Western civilization. It has been proved by the International Movement for Constitutionalism that to strive only for the establishment of constitutionalism doesn't necessarily mean a success of constitutionalism of a country. Moreover, the achievement of constitutionalism must be based on constitutional culture, and the Movement for Constitutionalism in China has a history of nearly a century, however, we have still been endeavoring to carry out the constitutionalism. Lack of constitutional culture is the main reason for this situation. As an exotic system, the constitution was used as a tool by the personages of great vision in old China in the environment lacking favorable conditions, especially constitutional culture.This thesis investigates the differences of constitutional culture between western and eastern countries and examines the reasons for the lack of Chinese constitutional culture, through tracing back the history of Chinese and western constitutional culture. Finally, the paper concludes that constitutional culture with distinct Chinese characteristics based on traditional Chinese culture can only be achieved by finding the joint between western constitutional culture and its Chinese counterpart for sake of identifying the western constitutional culture and laying a solid foundation for the realization of constitutionalism.