Vox
October 13, 2011
Iceland’s economic meltdown has led to a change in its constitution. This column, by one of the 25 people elected to draft the new document, documents the journey.
Iceland has never been particularly good at outsourcing. Insourcing, on the other hand, has been something of a national sport. For example, a few years ago first the nephew and then a close friend of the prime minister were appointed judges on the Supreme Court. When a few years later the prime minister’s son was appointed district judge, a more qualified applicant for the job sued the offending minister and was awarded financial compensation by the Supreme Court (much lower compensation, however, than a lower court had decided). After the financial crash of 2008, to take another example, the government thought it better to appoint a domestic Special Investigation Committee (SIC), rejecting proposals for an international commission of enquiry that would have been beyond all suspicion of partiality. As it happened, the SIC did a good job, but that is another story (Gylfason 2010).
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