Public Control in a Constitutional Democracy: Ecuadorian Experience and Ukrainian Perspective

Abstract

The development of constitutional democracy in Ukraine under martial law, the digital transformation of governance, and the strengthened role of civil society make it increasingly important to provide a clear legal conceptualisation of the activity of citizens who influence public authority without holding an electoral mandate. At the level of current legislation, certain forms of civic participation have received normative regulation; however, the holistic constitutional and legal status of a citizen who exercises an oversight and supervisory function in relation to public authority without an electoral mandate remains normatively undefined. The aim of the study is to clarify the relationship between the activity of representative institutions grounded in an electoral mandate and civic participation without such a mandate in a constitutional democracy, drawing on the experience of Ukraine and Ecuador. The study employs the comparative legal method, a formal-legal analysis of the constitutional provisions of both states, as well as systemic-structural and functional approaches to distinguishing the significance of representative activity and civic participation within the mechanism of public authority. As a result of the study, it is proposed to introduce into legal terminology the concept of the «participant» — used here in a narrow, substantive sense as a counterpart to the «representative» — to designate the subject of participatory action, by analogy with how «representative» designates the subject of representative action. A functional distinction between these two roles has been identified: the representative acts within the hierarchy of public authority, whereas the participant performs an oversight and supervisory function from outside it. An example of such a distinction at the constitutional level is provided by Ecuador, where representation and civic participation are recognized as equally weighted components of the constitutional order. Prospects for further research relate to the conceptualization of the figure of the participant as an independent subject of constitutional democracy — its doctrinal elaboration as a necessary component of the state order alongside the figure of the representative. At the same time, account should be taken of the negative aspects of the Ecuadorian experience, which faced the political capture of participatory bodies in cases where they were vested with authoritative.