The Existential Crisis Of States, Between Recompositions Of Sovereignty And Metamorphoses Of Borders[La Crise Existentielle Des États, Entre Recompositions De La Souveraineté Et Métamorphoses Des Frontières]

Since the nineteenth century, the construction of the nation state has established the procedures of representative democracy, in which the political parties played a mediating role between the nation and the state. This model is today in crisis in most democratic countries. The decline in voter turnout, the success of populist movements and "anti-system" votes, the centrifugal forces that are exerted within states are some manifestations of the malaise of democratic institutions. This questioning of representative procedures has not yet been offset by the establishment of deliberative processes whose legitimacy is sufficiently recognized to form the basis of incontestable decisions. Certain legal frameworks are beginning to be drawn, such as the Aarhus Convention and the texts that flow from it, but they remain too linked to environmental issues to constitute a global response to the current democratic crisis. In addition, the articulation of deliberative devices and conventional institutional procedures remains to be invented. All this explains very largely that, in the industrialized countries where the methods of government of the rule of law were invented and the principles of representative democracy implemented, the States are experiencing, in various forms, a veritable existential crisis. This can translate into both recompositions of sovereignty and metamorphoses of borders.