The origin of the representative model of the Constitution of 1978

Authors

  • Jorge Urdánoz Universidad Pública de Navarra

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/rep.186.01

Keywords:

Political representation, Transition to democracy, electoral systems, bicameralism, Congress, Senate, Heresthetics, philosophy of law, political philosophy, democracy, theory of democracy.

Abstract

The article aims to clarify certain aspects concerning the origin of the Spanish representative model, aspects not well explained so far. The text seeks to discover the “true intentions” held by those politicians who designed the two electoral systems included in the 1976 Law for Political Reform, since both systems would be later largely incorporated to the 1978 Constitution. We use a source that has not been previously used in these matters - the diplomatic teletypes sent by the Spanish United States Embassy to the Secretary of State. We obtain new results concerning several topics: a) the origin of the bicameralism; b) the adoption of proportionality; c) the beliefs of main actors in respect to the imminent electoral results; and d) the importance of the breakup between Fraga and the rest of the reformist team led by the King. The conclusions relate with the essence of our current representative model and with the methodological importance of the used sources, since they can be probably extrapolated to other countries.

Published

2019-12-05

Issue

Section

ARTICLES