DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL ROLE OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

This article aims to cast a look at the legitimacy crisis of current democracies as an introduction to this Special Volume. To this end it delves into the constitutive tensions that sustain modern States: into the tension between the substantive and the formal dimensions of citizenship, between citizenship as participatory status and as a synonym of nationality, and into the tension between democracy and representation. It then explores the Spanish constitutional framework on citizenship and on representative democracy and concludes that, whereas it embraces citizenship as a participatory status, it is also committed to political representation over and above citizens' participation.