A ilusão representativa
This is a critical study of representative democracy, through which anti-democratic vices are attributed to the liberal, and therefore indirect, model of representation of the popular will, of which the process of volitional dispossession operated by the elected agent to the detriment of his voters stands out. The formal notion of representation (the idea of a technical instrument, conveyed by the term Vertretung) is contrasted with its substantive dimension (the idea of incarnation, conveyed by the term Repräsentation). Taking Rousseau's substantialist conception as a theoretical background, the article challenges the representative model and accuses it of being a procedural expedient aimed only at concealing a real appropriation of power, which operates from an act of faith, a credo of democratic aspiration, an illusion instilled in voters by the system.
