Democratic Faithfulness. The Political Participation of Public Service under Conditions of Direct Democracy

The actual scenario of democracy in Latin-America deals with two particular phenomena that have shifted its holding from the people towards the government. On the one hand, democracy faces a scheme of instrumentalisation that reduces its nature to ballot casting during elections. On the other, it has been deprived of the essential elements that make free political participation a reality. As a consequence, society tends to think it must be faithful to who holds the power to organise an instrumental democracy, and not to who originally has the chance to decide: the people. This paper analyses the political and legal safeguards that must exist in a constitutional democracy in order to guarantee the exercise of political rights without fear of reprisals, particularly on those democratic exercises related to recalls and to the political participation of public servants.