The Constitution of Deliberative Democracy.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Review

The Constitution of Deliberative Democracy, by Carlos Santiago Nino. New Haven: Yale University Press Paperback, 1999.

Carlos Santiago Nino died suddenly in 1993 in La Paz, where he was at meetings to discuss the Bolivian Constitution he had helped draft. In The Constitution of Deliberative Democracy, his last book, he defines his own particular theory of democracy through an exploration of the moral justification of representative government.

Nino begins by examining the marriage of democracy and constitutionalism in what we call "constitutional democracy." Such a union, he concedes, is not an easy one. Tensions arise between democracy and constitutionalism when the expansion of one leads to a weakening of the other. Variants in the roles of constitutionalism and democracy result in diverse models of democratic government. To complicate matters further, there is no agreement about the meaning of constitutionalism, although it is generally accepted that it involves the rule of law and that the constitution--whether or not it is written--must occupy a position of superiority over ordinary laws. Notions of separation of powers, types of legislative bodies, and elected officials enrich and complicate the scenario.

Nino suggests that an examination of constitutionalism will reveal varying degrees of emphasis on the two components of liberal democracy--popular participation and limited government--the latter entailing restrictions on the government's ability to intrude on individual rights. In Europe the emphasis has been on popular participation, while in the United States, it has been on respect for the individual citizen. Nino describes the systems of Latin America as a "curious mixture" of both, although he contends that Latin Americans adhere more to the participatory...