In the Madisonian tradition of constitutional design, the foundation of a sustainable federalism is thought to be a scientifically precise balancing of national and subnational power. Experience shows, however, that national and subnational actors in highly diverse systems are capable of developing a rich array of extraconstitutional methods of mutual influence, so that the formal, constitutionalized balance of power rarely settles the question of the actual balance of power between levels of government. A more important factor in ensuring the long-term sustainability of a meaningfully federal system is the degree of symmetry across subnational units in their relation to the central state. A comparison of the U.S. and Spain suggests that federalism is most directly threatened when subnational units compete not collectively with the central state, thereby checking its power, but with each other, a condition that furnishes the central state with opportunities to exploit subnational rivalries in ways that risk genuine, long-term destabilization.
The present article commences analyzing the origins and influences of the religious discourse on the configuration of the modern constitutional discourse and the contributions of the jus-positivism in the consolidation of this sacred-civil language. The second issue is the definition of the U.S. Constitution as a mixed and not as a democratic constitution, with regard to the influences of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius to the Drafters of the first modern constitutional text; stability and equilibrium took preference over democracy in a wide sense. I also analyze how the Drafter's decision has conditioned the modern constitutional system up to the present.
Resumen:Las argumentaciones que tienden a una radicalización de la práctica democrática pueden resultar colaborativas con el contenido y alcance de los cambios que las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación -y, en particular, el fenómeno de internet-conllevan en los campos del derecho, la política y la administración. Concretamente, se analiza como aspectos principales de la obra de Bruce Ackerman relacionados con la filosofía normativa (la definición, exposición de las características y crítica del diálogo neutro y la neutralidad) podrían mejorar el Principio de Discurso de Habermas aplicado al derecho.Palabras Clave: neutralidad, Principio Discursivo, deliberación democrática y participación
The Spanish Constitution of 1978 provid- ed an opportunity for minority nationalities within Spain to achieve a degree of political au- tonomy not shared by others within the state. During the constituent process, the non-Span- ish speaking national communities of Catalonia and the Basque Country were the only political entities demanding political autonomy to ac- commodate their national identities in the new Constitution. Today, after thirty years of demo- cratic and constitutional development, we can see that the possibilities offered by the Spanish Constitution to recognize and accommodate the multinational character of the Spanish state have been lost. This article examines causes of this failure to take advantage of the possibilities provided by the Spanish Constitution to pro- vide for asymmetrical political autonomy for minority nationalities.
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