CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY - SOVEREIGNTY AND CONSTITUENT POWER

To conciliate democracy and constitutionalism is a complex and problematic task. There is the paradox: democracy means the people deciding relevant political issues of their community including the contents of their constitution. Constitutionalism, on its side, means to limit popular sovereignty. Constitution imposes itself as the manifestation of popular sovereignty and constituent power linking both. Thus, the conjugation of constitutionalism and democracy leads to another which is in its origin, i.e., sovereignty and constituent power. This article aims at discussing these two relations, i.e., constituent power and sovereignty and constitutionalism and democracy showing their constituting tensions in order to affirm nino's and gargarella's conception of deliberative democracy.