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A pressing international challenge is developing processes of constitution-making that manage the politics of reform and produce legitimate and effective constitutions. This challenge is of special concern for numerous American Indian nations that have been embroiled in dual governments and constitutional crises over the past several decades. This article traces the recent constitutional reform process of the second largest Indian nation in the United States, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

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"Harvard Project research makes clear that the welfare of American Indian nations in the twenty-first century will depend crucially on their ability to design effective, culturally-appropriate governing institutions and to implement informed economic and social decisions."

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"Harvard Project research makes clear that the welfare of American Indian nations in the twenty-first century will depend crucially on their ability to design effective, culturally-appropriate governing institutions and to implement informed economic and social decisions."

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"…We argue that the foundations of effective collective institutions sit on the processes of normative and positive acculturation of individuals, and we refer to socially shared normative and positive conceptions (or "norms") in the realm of human action as "culture." In this framework, culture-- especially a society's political norms -- constitute an informal social contract. Drawing n extensive field and quantitative research into the economic performace and constitutional structures of contemporary, self-governing American Indian societies in the United States, this paper sets forth an evolutionary theory of the social contract..."

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This paper examines the problem-solving capacities of tribal institutions among a number of tribes. Particular attention is paid to two economically successful and developing (non-gaming) reservations: the Flathead of Montana and the Cochiti Pueblo of New Mexico. The former is governed via a well-developed and codified parliamentary democracy, while the latter operates under a centuries-old theocracy. How can such stikingly different governmental systems both be compatible with the economic success of their respective nations?

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"...How do societies really establish more or less effective and stable institutions of self-government? This conundrum is leading many analysts to explore pre- and extra- constitutional socio-cultural foundations of social organization. This study argues that shared cultural norms of political legitimacy among rational individuals provide such foundations. To test the framwork we examine modern consitutional rule among a set of small nations: the very modern Apache and the Sioux tribes on American Indian reservations..."

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"…Under the auspices of the federal trust responsibility, the U.S. Federal Government has historically conducted various enterprises, including the maintenance and marketing of Indian timber resources, on behalf of Indian tribes through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Perhals the trust respinsibility was intended as a sort of quid pro quo for disenfranchising the Indians of untold millions of acres of land during the persuit of America's "manifest destiny". Whatever the reason for this federal interest in Indian affairs, the Federal Government has efectively been serving as the executor of a will, while the decedent is alive and well..."

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"…In the modern Western World, we think of life and the economy as being ordered by formal law and property rights. Yet formal fules, in even the most developed economy, make up a small (although very important) part of the sum of contraints that shape choices; a moment's reflection should suggest to us the pervasiveness of informal cintraints... - Douglass C. North..."

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