‘One Army, One People’? Constitution-making, Alternative Imaginaries, and Military Rule in Sudan

Abstract

This thesis examines how successive military regimes in Sudan have shaped the country’s constitutional history—not as interruptions to legal order but as central authors of its form and meaning. Focusing on the regimes of Ibrahim Abboud (1958-1964), Jaafar al-Nimeiri (1969-1985), and Omar al-Bashir (1989-1999), this study argues that constitution-making in Sudan has functioned less as a neutral legal exercise and more as a strategic and ideological project aimed at legitimising authoritarian rule and changing political order. Through detailed analysis of primary sources, this thesis traces how military rulers used the language and rituals of constitutionalism to perform legitimacy, centralise power, and reimagine postcolonial sovereignty.

While much of the existing scholarship on Sudanese constitutionalism centres on elite party politics and their constitutional debates, this study foregrounds the military as a key constitutional actor. It introduces competing visions of Sudanisation that undermined Sudan’s constitutional development: tutelary Sudanisation, an elite-led, authoritarian project in which ideas of unity and identity are imposed through centralised rule, and alternative Sudanisation philosophies, participatory visions rooted in varying popular efforts to redefine the state. This thesis highlights how these rival projects have coexisted and collided, each shaping Sudan’s constitutional trajectory in distinct ways. By repositioning militarised regimes at the centre of Sudan’s constitutional history, this thesis contributes to broader debates on African and Middle Eastern constitutionalism, authoritarian legality, and postcolonial state formation. It argues that constitution-making in Sudan has been both a mechanism of control and a terrain of struggle—where the meaning of the nation, sovereignty, and justice has been repeatedly contested and reimagined.