Chapter 1 provides an overview of the core argument and empirical approach of the book. It also situates social constitutionalism with respect to other visions of constitutional law (including liberal and illiberal constitutionalism), describes how social constitutionalism rose in prominence alongside the emergence of neoliberalism, and details what is at stake with the embedding (or lack of embedding) of social constitutions.

Private Associations in the Ancient Greek World investigates the rules and regulations produced by ancient private associations in an attempt to show why and how associations were creating a system of well-ordered groups within their communities. Regulations represent, in fact, an understudied aspect of ancient associative life: this book aims to fill this gap by approaching the well-known phenomenon of ancient associations from a new angle. It analyses the organisational structures, legislative mechanisms and features of associations, while at the same time investigating the potential models from – and interrelations with – the habits and strategies of political institutions. It also provides an assessment of the associations’ impact on the broader socio-cultural and physical environment and of their role in local societies, thanks to the establishment of such regulations. The book explores the ideology, values, ideas and aspects of identity embedded in the regulations as ways adopted by associations to create a specific profile to present to the outside world, as well as to members (both existing and future).

Chapter 4 tracks how the tutela procedure came to attain a central place in Colombian life, as people were inundated with opportunities to learn about the new constitution, including through media campaigns, popular television shows, board games, and comics. Over time, the tutela became “vernacularized,” and Colombians not only talked about the tutela procedure but transformed the word tutela in several different verb forms. Colombians developed a set of beliefs about the possibilities created by the new constitution, and these beliefs – whether accurate or inaccurate in relation to the constitutional text – drove claim-making using the tutela procedure, which in turn ensured the social embedding of the constitution.

Chapter 3 provides the backdrop of constitutionalism in Colombia, demonstrating that although many sectors of society sought dramatic legal change with the 1991 Constitution, few imagined the breadth of the social changes that would come with that legal text. It tracks how substantive social constitutionalism and the creation of new access mechanisms, most importantly the tutela procedure, emerged. It closes with an introduction to early legal claim-making under the 1991 Constitution.

Chapter 2 introduces the idea of “constitutional embedding” and describes how legal mobilization can put into motion processes that result in the embedding of social constitutionalism. Constitutional embedding occurs along two dimensions: social and legal. Where social and legal embedding reinforce one another, constitutional embedding will be particularly robust. Where they do not, constitutional embedding will be vulnerable to challenges related to the scope of the law, concerns of powerful actors, and the workload judges must navigate. Each type of challenge can derail both social and legal embeddedness, and, as a result, limit the potential for social constitutionalism to translate into gains in real access to social welfare goods. Legal mobilization can catalyze constitutional embedding, as it facilitates the social construction of legal grievances and the development of judicial receptivity to particular kind of claims, in the process shaping views about the law.

Following the overarching theme of associations’ regulations, the chapters of this book have provided the reader with different insights into a large variety of ancient associations that were embedded in as many local realities, in an attempt on the one hand to highlight similar patterns but on the other hand also to stress the vivacity and diversity of the fenomeno associativo, ‘associational phenomenon’: although common traits certainly emerge, one should in no way expect uniformity. The world of associations was in fact a complex one: this book has mainly explored associations active in the Greek-speaking world, but even in this ‘common cultural sphere’ one sees a great variety of different options at play, which mirror the character of their various societies. The ways in which associations operated were a result of the strategies adopted by them on the basis of the different challenges they encountered and the way in which they appear to us is also linked to the contingent production and preservation of the sources, which varied depending on location and time. It is therefore not surprising that the picture we have gained from late Hellenistic and early Roman Athens is a different one from that of contemporary Mantinea, for instance: in Athens, as we have seen in the discussion by Arnaoutoglou in Chapter 6, associations made full use of the polis’ general directions, trends and mechanisms in the regulation of members’ behaviour so as to enhance their profile and foster their autonomy, room of action or survival, by providing an image that matched the expectations of the public administration.

Despite the considerable number of private associations attested in the Peloponnese, epigraphic sources from this region only rarely allow us an insight into norms of the associations’ internal organisation. Beyond a regulation for the use of an hestiatorion, ‘banquet-hall’, and a chalkion (in this context the term probably refers to ‘bronze cooking utensils’ or the place where they were stored) on a metal tablet from Sicyon (sixth/fifth century BC), which is followed by a list of seventy-three male names,1 and an extremely fragmentary inscription from Mantinea,2 which refers to a nomos and to imposition of fines, texts of this type are not preserved. Some indirect light on private associations’ rules and regulations is further shed by a small number of honorific decrees originating in Peloponnesian towns. This chapter will focus on this category of texts from Mantinea.

The self-perpetuity of Greek private associations and the continuous performance of their collective activities presupposed the ability both to admit new members and to draw regular contributions (that is to say, material support) from the existing ones. The diffuse evidence on the rules that regulated these essential aspects of the associations’ internal functions has been thoroughly examined both in the pioneering works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and in more recent studies.