TITLE:
Democratic Principle and the Right to Decide: The Case of Catalan Secession
AUTHORS:
José J. Jiménez Sánchez
KEYWORDS:
Democracy, Right to Decide, Sovereign Power
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.1 No.6,
September
24,
2014
ABSTRACT: These pages reflect on the connection, at first
sight evident, between the democratic principle and the right to decide. However,
this work highlights some of the contradictions in which certain of its supporters
fall and it defends. On the contrary, the need to establish that the relationship
between the principle of the rule of law and the democratic principle cannot give
either preeminence over the other. The reason lies in that the democratic principle
cannot be understood as the mere sum of particular wills of a specific community,
but rather as an expression of the conditions that ensure the formation of a rational
political will. The democratic principle can only be understood from a normative,
and not factual, conception of sovereign power.