PODER, LIBERTAD Y RESPONSABILIDAD POLÍTICA EN LA DEMOCRACIA REPRESENTATIVA

Resumen

-- The power of the State maintains an ambiguous relation with human liberty. Although it is certain that it appears frequently as its enemy, other forms can appear as an ally and promoter. Representative democracy is a serious attempt to provide a satisfactory solution to this ambiguity and the contradictions it produces. One of the most notable advantages, in comparison with other forms of government, is that it provides mechanisms to make possible the political responsibility of the state rulers, understood as independent and different from moral or legal responsibilities. Among the reasons that cause the crisis of the representative democracy, a privilege place could be occupied by the crash of political responsibility. As a reaction towards this crisis, sorne proposals prefer the total elimination of this false formal democracy, and its substitution by a real and substancial democracy, in which, for the sake of obtaining happiness, the formalisms that limit the action of the State and distort the will of the people would be suppressed.
With this, despotism would be restored and would probably degenerate in a tyranny. It is possible that the representative democracy would last if it is capable of introducing legal and political reforms, through which the notion of political responsibility could be restare.