Alessandra Maia Terra De Faria

On the Social and the Political: Theories of Political Representation: Beyond the Universal Suffrage Alessandra Maia Terra De Faria

The book herein deals with theories of political representation as they are exposed by Bernard Manin, Pierre Rosanvallon and Nadia Urbinati,considering the perspective of a tense existing relationship between democracy and political representation. There is a rhetoric that follows the universal suffrage adoption in which it is seen as a solution to the tense relationship among political representation and democracy, what has led general understanding of representative institutionality to be surrounded by superstitions regarding its mechanisms effectiveness and responsiveness. It is possible to approximate the studied theories if political representation is inquired as a process that mediates these tensions between political and social spheres. The question is that for both former authors, the political representation process is pre-established and, thus,not permeable to changes. While to the later, a different attitude towards the relationship between the social and the political seems to assure a unique perspective of open process to be considered,translated in an expansive and contradictory conception of politics,of social and political intersection.