Between constitutional projects and realities in Chile: gradualism, inflection and rupture. Part I: State, citizenship and rights between 1811-1973

Abstract

This article examines the itinerary of the Chilean constitutions that were in force between 1811 and 1973, and those projects that, for various reasons, were not debated or even less plebiscited by citizens. In this sense, the typology applied to classify constitutions promulgated as ideas and projects that remained unpublished in our political history is important, based on two criteria: one, taking as a reference the democratic and republican tradition based on French and Anglo-Saxon sources, which constituted the criterion we have called filiation, taken from the literary theory of Edward Said, where we can analyse the gradualness and inflection in terms of the physiognomy of the state, the evolution of rights and the purpose of citizenship without exclusion; two, the projects that assume, both in their drafting and in their moulding, the rupture of the democratic rule of law, assuming the criterion of affiliation, which is also Said's, and which allows us to analyse the introduction of Marxist-Leninist sources or the doctrine of national security, closer to a corporatist vision, from the rupture of the aforementioned tradition.