Political rights and freedoms: Problems of content certainty

Abstract

The concept of “political rights” of a person and a citizen, widely used today, is in fact far from certain, both in terms of the specific rights that it is generally customary to include in its content and in terms of the specific powers that would constitute the content of these rights. In this regard, this article analyses political rights themselves, which the author finds necessary to distinguish from human rights in the socio-political sphere. The latter include freedom of assembly, the right to petition, freedom of speech, the right to unite, etc. Considerable attention is paid to the substantive characteristics of political rights: thus, the author concludes that “participation in state affairs” although it is named as a right in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, cannot claim the role of real and current subjective public law. Transformations of classical political rights ensuring the participation of citizens in power in modern political and legal discourse are analyzed. The problematic aspects of the concept of national representation and constituent power are considered. The author concludes that even with the most adequate and authentic mechanisms for the exercise of the right to popular representation, such power never belongs fully to the people. The article justifies that the natural political right is the right to revolt (“the right to resistance”, “the right to revolution”). The natural political right of the people “to revolt” acquires the characteristic of precisely “right”, and not a bare political opportunity only if there are institutions of legitimization and subsequent legalization. As a result, the right at the present stage would be better described as the right to a legitimate rule of law.