Democracy in constituent moments: a political-philosophical exploration of the 1977–78 constitutional debate in spain
- Autores: Francisco Javier Bellido Sánchez
- Directores de la Tesis: José María Rosales Jaime (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad de Málaga ( España ) en 2022
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Manuel Toscano Méndez (presid.), Elena García Guitián (secret.), María Marczewska Rytko (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Estudios Avanzados en Humanidades. Especialidades en: Historia, Arte, Filosofía y Ciencias de la Antigüedad por la Universidad de Málaga
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: RIUMA
- Resumen
This research focuses on the Spanish constitutional debate of 1977–78. It checks how some of the main arguments and ideas set out there had a large influence on the renewal of the political vocabulary of the nation. After an initial political change from dictatorship between 1975 and 1977 to calling the first general election in June 1977, Parliament, in its deliberative sessions, became the main source of modernization of both political language and institutions. I argue that by analyzing the arguments presented in that constitutional debate the meanings of a cluster of political concepts such as freedom, democracy, equality, pluralism, sovereignty, political reform, political autonomy, nation, nationalities (nacionalidades), self-rule, and self-determination can be brought to light.
Their semantic changes informed the design of the country’s new political institutions. From a methodological point of view this research assumes an interdisciplinary rationale that combines political philosophy, conceptual history, and parliamentary history. It suggests an approach to political philosophy that attends to the argumentative rhetoric of a constituent assembly. Further, it proposes to understand conceptual history from the perspective of, first, the historical semantics of the two constituent moments of twentieth-century Spain, 1931 and 1977–78 studied in chapter one and chapter two, and second, of the constitutional sessions held between May and October 1978 as analyzed from chapters three to six.
I argue that the political ideas and reflections debated in the Constituent Assembly are relevant to political philosophy. In that sense, political philosophy is understood in this study as an approach to investigate the argumentative usages of classic political concepts in the light of the controversies raised during the constitutional sessions. The aim is to check how the uses of these concepts produce new meanings and have effects on the ways in which political ideas were rhetorically used in parliamentary speeches, namely in the case of the founding moment of a democratic regime.
This research differs from other approaches to the study of constitutional debates in Spain insofar as it attends to their argumentative potential to renovate the political vocabulary and inspire the building of new institutions. Topics of political philosophy such as for example democratic legitimacy, sovereignty, or the justification of individual rights were subject to discussion during the constitutional debate. By selecting these topics this study clarifies the relationship between arguments of political philosophy and the conceptual changes that they produced in the parliamentary setting.
In their contributions to the debate, MPs aimed to give new meanings to classic political concepts. They were deliberating about how to build the democratic institutions that should be enshrined in the new Constitution. One of the immediate effects of this parliamentary debate, preceded by party negotiations and enlarged and enriched in parallel public debates held in the media, was the renewal of the political vocabulary in Spain. Political concepts reappeared with both classic and new meanings when compared to previous national and international democratic experiences.
