THE LEGITIMITY OF THE CITIZEN CONSTITUTION FROM THE TENSION BETWEEN CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY

• Grant number: 22/06215-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2023
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Law - Theory of Law
• Principal Investigator: Rubens Beçak
• Grantee: Matheus Conde Pires
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/07108-6 - THE LEGITIMACY OF THE CITIZEN CONSTITUTION BASED ON THE TENSION BETWEEN CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Liberal democracy stands as a paradigm of the modern State, in which the legal-political order is based on the idea of popular sovereignty. However, democracy and constitutionalism can be seen as antagonistic traditions. While democracy carries with it a potential for change, transformation and instability, constitutionalism limits the political space in search of order, permanence and stability. This dichotomous relationship implies a reality in which institutional designs can offer greater, or lesser, deference to one of these two categories. In the contemporary paradigm, the performance of sovereign power works only to legitimize an established legal-political order and, subsequently, remains institutionally dormant. From this panorama it is possible to identify the "people" as a central category for the democratic foundation of the established paradigm. It is precisely at this point that the present project presents itself, in an attempt to collaborate for the understanding of the democratic foundation that legitimizes the 1988 Constitution. , in which, amidst the procedure of discursive analysis and bibliographic review, it is intended to answer the following problem: is the Citizen Constitution based on the act of a people that discursively builds itself from a part that presents itself as the whole? Such questioning is made possible through the post-structuralist perspective, especially by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Thus, we seek to investigate the 1988 Constitution and its metonymic foundation, in which the people category that underlies the legal-political order is, in reality, a part that presents itself and functions as a whole.