El fundamento democrático de la revocación del mandato representativo

Résumé

The revocation of the representative mandate is a fundamental political right, embedded in the democratic principle, as it confers powers and functions that integrate the citizen’s legal-political status by regulating popular participation in public affairs, particularly with regard to the control and the political accountability of public representatives. This doctoral thesis presents the assumptions outlined in the title: the basis for the revocation of the representative mandate lies on popular sovereignty. What does this imply? Firstly, the repeal has a democratic soul and its non-recognition in the constitution involves a restriction of political freedom, which is untenable in the democratic State; secondly, the revocative institution is not part nor it is exclusive of the imperative mandate; thirdly, the representative mandate does not imply the transmission or the alienation neither of the ownership nor of the exercise of sovereignty, but the delegation or commission of the exercise of public powers. This research seeks to answer crucial questions of the democratic theory: why are people sovereign? What is the origin of the democratic foundation of sovereignty? What does popular sovereignty mean? It is from this sound basis that the meaning and the legal and constitutional implications of the representative mandate should be explained. Finally, it is also important to analyze the reason why the revocation of representative mandate is an irrevocable requirement of the democratic principle. Throughout this thesis we will retrace the history of political ideas, we will go through the constitutional ideology, we will dive into the theory of law and we will take a look at anthropology, in search of arguments that will allow us to assert with scientific accuracy that the revocation of the representative mandate is pertinent to the people's sovereignty, a keystone of democratic constitutionalism.