The Role of Participation and Representation for Democratic Criticism

Abstract

Since the end of Cold War there has been a surprising two-fold conceptual shift with deep consequences on our understanding of democratic innovation. Participation and representation lost their stable opposed positions within democratic theory, performing new analytical roles. We argue that the opposition of both concepts was closely related to historical circumstances that are not any longer in place. New circumstances have allowed the analitic dissociation between representation and representative government, and new and more precise definitions of participation to understand democratic innovation experiences.