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The Constitution of Zaire (French: Constitution de Zaïre), was promulgated on 15 August 1974, revised on 15 February 1978, and amended on 5 July 1990. Defining state power as an extension of the individual powers of Mobutu Sese Seko, the 1974 constitution codified Zaire as a one-party dictatorship and enshrined the status of Mobutism as the state ideology, together with the dominant position of the ruling Popular Movement of the Revolution (MPR) party. The 1974 constitution was the third in the Congo's post-independence history, replacing earlier constitutions adopted to replace the original basic law of 1960, in 1964 and 1967.
According to academics M. Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, the 1974 constitution should be seen as the culmination of a period of Zairian political history beginning in 1970. The phase was marked by growing national self-confidence and the emergence of Mobutu's Authenticité policy to remove non-"authenic" foreign influences from Zairian society. Young and Turner describe the 1974 constitution as the "normative embodiment of the Mobutist state at its apogee" and argued that it was a unprecedented legal expression of "centralized, untrammelled personal power". They did, however, note that the "Mobutist state never approximated the leviathan vision embodied in the constitution". In particular, after the Shaba Invasions (1977–78), Mobutu was forced to liberalize Zaire's political structure to allow contested elections and a degree of political dissent.
Under the provisions of the Constitution, the MPR was recognised as Zaire's only "institution" and its president as President of Zaire itself with total power over government and judiciary (Articles 28 and 30). Mobutism was declared the state ideology (Article 46) and all Zairians were automatically made members of the MPR (Article 8). Mobutu himself was exempted from the restrictions on power mentioned in the document and given the power to unilaterally modify the document at will.
The 1974 constitution remained in force, with some subsequent modifications, until the collapse of the Mobutu regime during the First Congo War. In 1994, the first of two Transitional Constitutions were adopted; the current Constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was adopted in 2006.