With the aim of changing the model of liberal representative democracy and give greater prominence to popular participation, Ecuador’s new 2008 constitution recognized a whole set of new rights of participation. This article starts from the idea that these rights, like others, may take the form of what we call “constituent rights” or “constitutional rights”. From here, the article argues that although there was a constituent will and sufficient legal basis in the Constitution of 2008 to develop a model where participation acquired a constituent and transformed character, its regulatory development, practical deployment and political-cultural conditions have ended, after a few years, emptying such rights of their constituent character, and turning them into strict constitutional rights.