Interpretações da representação política: estudo das tensões entre escolha e deliberação

Abstract

This paper analyzes some of the features and traits that appear in democratic theory and that connect it with political representation. Notions such as “equality”, “trust”, and “legitimacy” are seen here as elements that have their roots in ancient Athenian democracy and that have continued to be problematized by the moderns. For this, the work makes a bibliographical review, seeking an approach to the works of some of the authors of classical political philosophy and modern political science. In order to analyze the origins of the accusations of “crisis of representation”, the work advances in the study of the elective method and electoral behavior, giving attention to the decisive moment of deliberative activity and the evolution of this lapse in political temporality. Based on electoral authorization, we sought to confront two scholars of contemporary political thought. Bernard Manin and Nádia Urbinati are political philosophers who have specialized in the representation debate, where they have adopted distinct positions regarding the probable intersection between democracy and representation. While Manin adheres to a minimalist vision of democracy, giving electoral choices the core of citizens’ interactions, Urbinati tries to broaden temporality, positioning citizens as mobilizing subject of public discourse. In sum, the paper aims to demonstrate how such visions of contemporary democracy have continued to situate civil society within a certain “political apathy”, the founding perspective of representative government.