Rethinking democracy from the horizons of constitutionalism in Latin America

Abstract:

The guiding problem of this research is to identify the meaning of Community Democracy in contemporary Bolivian constitutionalism. Thus, the general objective is to verify the constituent meaning of Community Democracy beyond the analysis of the constitutional text, based on the reflection on the diversity of spaces for construction and democratic practices of a community matrix. The present investigation comprised three moments: in the first moment, it approached the constitutional innovations brought by the contemporary Latin American constitutionalism, especially the Bolivian one. In the next item, an attempt was made to understand the different conceptions of democracy existing in Bolivia, arising from the diversity of community social structures. Finally, Community Democracy was analyzed as one of the innovations of Latin American constitutionalism at the end of the 20th century, foreseen in the new political charter and materialized in the concrete practices of Bolivia. As a result, it was shown that new ways of thinking about the relationship between the State and original populations deserve to be highlighted. However, the demands of community power have been marginalized as official constitutional recognition has been applied with the intention of keeping ancestral traditions in a subordinate position. The approach method used was the hypothetical-deductive, historical and monographic procedure, with bibliographic and documentary research techniques.

Keywords:
Latin American Constitutionalism; Community Democracy; Demo-diversity; Bolivia Constitution