branches of government. Balkin's "framework originalism" views the Constitution as an initial framework for governance that sets politics in motion and makes politics possible; it must be filled out over time through constitutional construction and state building. This process of building out the Constitution is living constitutionalism. Constitutional rot Balkin uses the term "constitutional rot" to describe the process by which democracies become less responsive to public will and less devoted to the public good over time. Constitutional rot grows because of (1) increasing inequalities of income and wealth; (2) increasing political polarization and tribalism; (3) loss of trust between members of different parties and between the public and established institutions; and (4) policy disasters that show that government officials are not competent and/or cannot be trusted. Balkin argues that the framers of the U.S. Constitution believed that all republics would decay over time, and they designed the Constitution so that it could ride out periods of constitutional rot in the hopes of a later renewal of republican institutions. Many of the Constitution's features, including staggered terms for the President, House, and Senate, separation of powers, federalism, and an independent judiciary, are forms of "republican insurance" designed to achieve this goal. Balkin distinguishes constitutional rot from constitutional crisis. Constitutional crisis is a period in which people reasonably believe that constitutional institutions are about to fail or have failed. Because a key purpose of constitutions is to make politics possible, constitutions fail when people no longer try to struggle for power within the terms of the constitution. This may result in political paralysis, or in civil war, insurrections, secession, or attempted coups. Although the two concepts of crisis and rot are distinct, Balkin argues that an advanced case of constitutional rot can generate a constitutional crisis. Constitutional crisis Balkin and Levinson offer a typology of constitutional crises. In Type One crises, political actors publicly announce that they will no longer abide by the constitution and disobey direct judicial orders. In Type Two crises, fidelity to the constitution leads to disaster, because people think that the Constitution prevents them from acting or because they believe that the Constitution does not provide for a certain event so that paralysis occurs and disaster strikes. In a Type Three crisis, people disagree so strongly about what the constitution means that they turn to civil war, secession, or insurrection. Balkin and Levinson believe real constitutional crises