STATE INSTITUTIONS

PROCESS OF CONFIGURATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATE

1. Process of formation, concept and elements.
The state can be described as a territorial society, organized according to law and
endowed with a power qualified as sovereign. If the state does not exist, neither does
the Institutions.
1.1 THE EVOLUTION
In the feudal times, the power was not centralised in a single person, there was not a
superior leader, only feudal laws. The absolute monarchies, arrived in the modern
ages, as for example the catholic kings in Spain. So, the State appears in the modern
ages. *
Maquiavelo, was the one to introduce the term state, to refer Renaissance political
organization. This brings at the same time organizational, economic, political and
military centralisation. This resulted on the bourgeoisie supporting the monarch, who
increased his power by submitting to the feudal laws.
In the Constitution of Cadiz (‘La Pepa’) the absolutes monarchies were put into doubt
for the first time. The first revolution against it was the French revolution in 1789. This
led to a liberal State which was named the State of law.
Liberalism has several dimensions. The political one, which refers to the liberal state,
the economic, economic liberalism and the legal aspect, the State of law.
The demo liberal state means one step forward. An example, is Germany with the
Constitution of Weimar or in the case of Spain, with the emergence of the Republic. In
both, we can find mechanisms of semidirect democracy within the representative
democracy that protects the social, cultural and political minorities.
1.2 ELEMENTS OF THE STATE
People, territory and power, those are the elements of the State.
Power depends so much on strength, coercion, and consent, on the citizens awareness
that what is commanded is right for the common interests. When it is based only on
force, this power is constituted as a factual power, as it happens in dictatorships,
lacking the element of consent that is the one that ultimately legitimates power and
concerts it into power of law.
1.2.2 SOVEREIGNTY AS A DEFINING ELEMENT OF THE STATE

Bodin, included a fourth element, which was the sovereignty. That’s why he
thinks that the elements of state are people, territory, power AND sovereignty.
Este no forma parte si pregunta de la CLASSICAL THEORY.
 He thinks that the power is sovereign, when it is absolute, perpetual, original,
invisible and inalienable, characterizing notes that ratify the desires of a
monarch that needed to justify the essence of its power and the use of it.
For Sieyes sovereignty resides in the nation (census suffrage -sufragio
censatario- is advocated), for Rousseau it resides in the people (this author
considers that to each person who composes the social body corresponds a
quota of sovereignty, reason why the suffrage must be universal).

The current status of sovereignty.

At the present time, the confrontation between national and popular
sovereignty can be considered overtaken by the universal admission of suffrage
as a right, which makes it universal.
This can be seen even in the Constitution of 1978 in which the Preamble refers
to the nations as subject of sovereignty, while in Article 1.2 of the Spanish
Constitution it says that sovereignty resides in the Spanish people.
In the Article 1.3 is established the political form of the Spanish State, which is a
parliamentary monarchy.
Liberty, justice, equality and political pluralism are the highest values of the
legal order.
APUNTAR PARTS OF THE CONSTITUTION (ARTICLE 1, 2 AND 3)

2. BIRTH AND EVOLUTION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM

Concepts:
- Liberalism: an ideology where the individual is the protagonist.
- Rule of law: is the legal concreteness of the liberal state.

1. The birth of the liberal state

The liberal state appears as the legal-political expression of bourgeois triumph. Is
configures as a class state and supposes beginning of the responsibility and
interdiction of the arbitrariness of public powers.
Characteristics of the rule of law:
1) The law is configured as the expression of the general will, so the policymaking body
enjoys the political primacy: It is the "rule of law".
2) In order to ensure legal certainty, a hierarchical system of rules is established.
3) Control and separation of powers to prevent a despotic exercise of them.
4) The rights "of the man and the citizen" are thus recognized, protecting the rights
and freedoms of the person, both in their private and public spheres.
5) The Administration is subject to the principle of legality.
6) At a later stage, appears the control of constitutionality of the laws, to avoid that
the constituted powers take over the decisions of the constituent power and to
consolidate a system without fissures.

LIBERAL STATE AUTHORS:

John Locke: