Synopsis The backdrop to the book a -- comparative study of several countries across three continents --is the understanding that every good constitution rigorously separates the legislature, executive, and judiciary from one another to guarantee the independence of each of these powers, such that this separation results in life, liberty and security. However, the constitution also symbolises and produces power. As such, constitutionalism as a political culture of laws should therefore explain the dynamics of power. In viewing the constitutions together with the societies in which they emerge, this study shows how institutional practices originating from a legal text create a matrix of power that owes its life neither to a contract between men, nor between the state and men, nor even between the society and men, but rather to relations established, organised, and formalised by laws. It seeks to investigate how power acts on power, and is a revealing account of how the theory of separation is both a myth and a reality.