This paper attempts to explain why we are presently witnessing the decay of the public space and the "ethnicization" of social relations in Quebec. The appeal to the right of law and minority rights are inscribed in a trend toward the judicialization of social relations and the constitutionalization of rights, a trend specific to the post-1982 Canadian context. In this regard, a series of political choices made in Canada have led to the fragmentation of identities and the submission of legislative bodies to the courts. With this, we have begun to witness the birth of a particularist, biocultural type of citizenship and a regression of democratic debate within a space that is no more than a site for the confrontation of particularist rights. After having shown how this situation skirts the fundamental democratic issue of a political community, the authors examine the Canadian and Quebec situations. Transformed into a judicial community, Canada is inhibited from constructing a true pan-Canadian political community, while Quebec is experiencing difficulty in giving life to a viable, shared Francophone political culture within a society which has become pluricultural and multinational. In light of this current global crisis of democracy, the authors propose the reinvention of the political community on a broader basis and a rethinking of the exercise of democracy within supranational institutions predicated on the durability of individual national units.