2 - Constitutionalism and Representation in Ibero-America during the Independence Processes

Summary

The objective of this chapter is to draw the route map followed both by constitutions and the representation of the electoral base in Spanish and Portuguese America from the Napoleonic occupation of the Peninsula (1807/1808) until the creation of new sovereign states at the end of the wars of independence (ca. 1824). The argument that articulates the discussion here and the dialogue between the Hispanic and Lusitanian world is that the constitutional and representative question assumed, jointly and with many variants, a constructivist dimension regarding the dilemma of sovereignty. In the context of the crisis of the Iberian monarchies, representation of the territories played a central role in constitutional experiments and electoral regulations. Faced with the fact, or danger, of dismemberment of preexisting political bodies, the adoption of a constructivist stance was manifest as much in the leaders who attempted to restore and safeguard the unity of the bi-oceanic monarchies as in those who sought to legitimize the emergence of new communities aspiring to be sovereign.