ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what sovereignty requires in order to be imagined and analyzes how it is articulated and practised in the Basque democratization process. It looks at the political capacity and decision-making autonomy that is available to the Basque population in order to reproduce itself as a democracy. Sovereignty implies a particular relationship or division between the state and the community, and so does democracy, where political legitimacy and authority may only come from the community. Popular sovereignty is currently understood as the political capacity a community has to reproduce as a demos, across time and space according to its own political decisions. The political rights and authority of the Basque territories in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (ACBC) are ensured by the parliamentary representation system established by the Law of the Historic Territories. Political power has traditionally been identified with sovereignty, and sovereignty understood in its Hobbesian sense as the monopoly of the modern state.
