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Criminal political principialism as a fetish

Authors

  • Juan Pablo Mañalich
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Abstract

The paper offers a critique of distinctively academic understanding of penal politics, which may be designated as “principlism”. Hereto, the irreducible political nature of the discourse of penal politics is asserted, the neglecting of which is very clearly illustrated by the postulation of a so called “subsidiarity principle”, upon which the characterization of penal intervention as ultima ratio is usually grounded. The paper closes with a sketch of some implications of the repoliticization of the discourse of penal politics in terms of radical democracy.

Keywords:

política criminal , subsidiariedad y ultima ratio , democracia radical