For forcing ucs4 when installing Python:
./configure --enable-unicode=ucs4 make make install
For forcing ucs2 when installing Python:
./configure --enable-unicode=ucs2 make make install
Once you have it installed, a ucs4 version will produce the following:
bash$ python Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Mar 4 2008, 10:58:18) [GCC 3.4.5] on linux >>>import sys >>> print sys.maxunicode 1114111
And, a ucs2 version will produce the following:
>>>import sys >>> print sys.maxunicode 65535