Miranda wrote five successive projects of Federal Constitutions for Spanish America and one for the Brazilian Federation, which all express a long-term revolutionary strategy and a visionary promotion of modern democratic governance, warning against the high risk in Latin America of ideological manipulation of popular power he had observed in France. These texts aimed to replace the colonial order with an autonomous democratic scheme that could facilitate a progressive process of socio-ethnic inclusion, thereby building an American identity and promoting economic development, ultimately ensuring a durable emancipation of Latin America. He formulated an innovative combination of principles drawn from Greco-Latin antiquity, along with a selection from existing Anglo-Saxon and French experiences, to which Indian institutions are also added. The result was a new governance based on strict separation of powers together with subsidiarity, announcing what the European Union will try to achieve two centuries later: strong federal powers but strictly limited only to three areas: external defence/diplomacy, economic and monetary union, and human rights (gender, justice, free opinions and elections), while all the other policies remaining decentralised by realism and for protecting the different local identities. Miranda’s preoccupation was to channel through the new Rule of Law the conflicts and the social forces that the collapse of the absolutist Empire would inevitably release. His formula prevented electoral despotism (popular power) by a “mixed government” with electoral filters to ensure no domination of the legislative over the other powers. “All from the people and for the people but nothing by the people.”