dc.description.abstract | This doctoral dissertation aims to elucidate this main research question: To what
extent does the Spanish constitutional debate of 1931 show conceptual innovation in
the parliamentary context? Parliamentary deliberations around constitutional drafts
delve into alternative views on the foundations of a new state, in this case a
democratic state. There, concepts express not just the ideological differences between
political options, but also the social, political and economic concerns of a new
historical time.
Constitutional debates involve an extensive number of political and legal
knowledge whose intellectual references are usually found in different schools of
political thinking and philosophical ideas. Alternative viewpoints, often hardly
compatible, about fundamental rights and the state are contrasted in parliamentary
deliberations. As a result, divergent and disputed understandings of concepts are
visible. Parliamentary constitutional deliberations, unlike other kind of
parliamentary debates, reflect intellectual references in the context of constitutional
debates in a constituent assembly. They link international with national practices on
constitution-making. There, all kind of resources, from rhetorical skills to public law,
history of political thought and political theory arguments are present. Together,
they shape the foundations of a new political regime.
With this backdrop, this research takes the debates of the Spanish Constituent
Assembly (Cortes Constituyentes) of 1931 as an indispensable reference for legislative
production in the context of a new democratic regime and an instance of innovative
use of political concepts and ideas. That way it analyzes a selection of some of the
nuclear themes of political theory (controversies around the meanings of basic rights
and freedoms, the state, legitimacy, justice or property, among others)
conceptualized through parliamentary deliberations.
In this research, conceptual history, political theory and parliamentary
constitutional history are regarded as complementary disciplines. Combining their
methodological perspectives, the disputed parliamentary meanings of ideas, such as
state, reform, revolution, sovereignty, freedom of conscience, property rights and
semi-parliamentarism are revealed. Furthermore, the analysis of these concepts
brings to light the main features of conceptual development in the Spanish
Constituent Assembly of 1931.
Keywords: Spanish constitutional debate of 1931, political theory, conceptual history,
parliamentary deliberation, political rhetoric | en |