Countermajoritarian control as framework for the analysis of the influence of the new Latin American constitutionalism upon democracy

Abstract

Both critics and endorsers of the new Latin American constitutionalism (NLAC), as the wave of constitutional reforms carried out in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia between 1999 and 2009 referred to, agree that these reforms have altered the countermajoritarian control devises in the above countries. However, this finding shows some conceptual flaws relating to several aspects such as: a) the nature of the countermajoritarian control devices; b) their logic of relationship with democracy; c) what the very existence of these devices reveals about the scope of democracy itself; d) the entity where these devises and democracy operate, and finally e) the actual novelty of NLAC compared to the past which, from some perspective, lacked a developed system of countermajoritarian control. This article proposes a new conceptual approach to resolve, at least partially, the above-mentioned conceptual dilemmas which need to be clarified before an empirical work could be properly tackled.

Keywords

• nuevo constitucionalismo latinoamericano, Estado de derecho, democracia, autoritarismo, populismo, movimientos sociales.