Odnos države i društva u političkoj zajednici
The relationship between state and society in a political association

Summary/Abstract: A political association is the highest form of association of free citizens for the purpose of shared decision-making on the affairs of the community. Its nature is thus necessarily dictated by its polemical identity. The unity of a political association depends on the relationships formed by different social traditions as they meet and mingle, while the way it is created is through debate, in which the conflictual nature of social life is amortized, in which the ideological, religious and moral views that invariably determine the physiognomy of every real society encounter one another. The success of social dialogue requires that the authority be acknowledged of the fundamental law, the constitution, which is itself an impersonal, universally binding principle, which the public recognize for that very reason. A constitution, as a constitutive act, governs all the essential elements of the political association, including the rules of social dialogue, establishing as it does the principles of a constitutional state and the rule of law which impose discipline on it. A crucial aspect of the concept of a political association, defined by debate between participants on an equal footing, is public participation by citizens who need to know how to think, to be capable of transcending their own personal interests and calculations as they embrace what they have in common, thereby converging on a universal view and taking into account the wider public interest, as well as protecting their own interests while protecting and respecting the interests of every memberof the society to which they belong.

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