Introduction

Abstract

The first chapter addresses a wide range of issues involving democracy in contemporary times and the construction of identities from its theoretical dimension. The chapter explores the concept of democracy from a perspective of building semantic meanings to allow for a better understanding of the rules of the democratic game. In its evolution, democracy, conceived to resist time, conflict, and crisis, started, to also invest in the popular autonomy, representing, therefore, a cooperative democracy, since it has an end and a means at the same time. It has an end because it has the purpose of aggregating several recipients and accommodating the fundamentals of an equal and participatory society; and a means because it will require several interpreters and mechanisms for its realization and development. Democracy has evolved, over the centuries, expanding its nuclei of adherence. Democratic living is intimately related to the foundations, choices, structures that hold authority, and the mechanisms in which these choices can take effect. If the original aim was to decentralize power, democracy also finds scope for the promotion of human rights and justice, which includes the superiority of the charter, the existence of fundamental rights and their social development, and the cooperation of the formal structures of power. This conceptual evolution allowed us to find materialization, including through external inputs, such as the UN. As an open system, democracy is unlimited and constructive, not having a single source of interpretation. Its essentiality lies in the cyclical attribute of conforming dissent—being in transformation is its natural and dynamic state. In this new field created by the UN, it is fundamental that the attributes that involve democracy and democratization are present in the process of forming a new constitutional charter, since they will enable a more participative environment, serving the constitution as a means for its realization.