Orígenes del concepto de orden público en España: su nacimiento en un marco jurisdiccional

Abstract

The combination of the two words "public" and "order" in the vocabulary of "science of police", referred to public places in town, was affected by important changes at the end of 18th century. These changes came from the proper evolution of the word "police" and the progress of a modern conception of the "public" which was an assertion of the existence of an extensive and egalitarian public space. This assertion was made against the background of a juridictional culture which organized the relations between subjects, communities and political power. The promotion of a new concept of political power, and of the law and its enforcement ―that would give to the notion of public order its dimension as enabling the executive power― would grow in strength with the notion of anarchy: "feudal anarchy" rapidly simbolized all the faults attributed to the juridictional order. Nevertheless, the political struggles and social mobilisations in the wake of the French Revolution would add a new meaning to this word: the hazard of chaos, understood not in its normative but rather in its social dimension, which was used to insult Jacobins and any advocates of the plebs. This meaning would be stabilized during the first part of XIX century.