Abstract

VALLE, Osella Desirée del. Debates about the reform of the municipal regime. Between the democratic opening and the restriction. Córdoba, 1923. Folia [online]. 2020, n.37, pp.41-64. ISSN 0325-8238.  http://dx.doi.org/10.30972/fhn.0374164.

This work focuses on the amendments to the municipal regime proposed in the Reforming Convention of the Constitution of the Province of Córdoba, Argentina, in 1923, and on the debates held and the modifications made since then. Among such debates, we focus mainly on those related to the composition of the electorate and the forms of government. There was a persistence of the dichotomy politics/administration, keeping the latter to local issues and the utility of this argument as well to keep a low level of participation which allowed some groups of the ruling elite to control the local government. The members of the convention who worked to broaden the municipal electorate, universalizing the suffrage, and facing the failure of this option and the establishment of the “qualified” vote in the amended constitutional text, struggled to determine the qualification criterion. Finally, during 1925, they succeeded in making the provincial legislature body pass the municipal organic law which established that the criterion would be the literacy of the electorate and not the taxpayer condition, as it was proposed by the other sector of the convention (and as it was in Córdoba until then). In this way, many inhabitants of towns of the province experienced their entrance to the local citizenship.

Keywords : Municipal regime; Suffrage; Oligarchic regime; Democratization.