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George Bernard Shaw's political comedies, The Apple Cart and On the Rocks, explore loopholes of representative democracy and Shaw's prospect for reformative dictatorship as an alternative. The Apple Cart reveals the political apathy of English people with all good social welfare in the late twentieth century, which naturally leads to the parliamentary politics controlled by powerful conglomerates. In On the Rocks, representative democracy fails to address extreme unemployment, and the reform plan of the prime minister, Sir Arthur, faces opposition from both the labor class and the conservative. Therefore, Shaw hints at the temporary necessity for reformative dictatorship within constitutional limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid escalating political and economic challenges, several EU nations have witnessed the emergence of technocratic governments, often perceived as complementary to or alternative for representative democracy. This research endeavors to identify the pivotal determinants of the rise of technocratic governments and to evaluate their prospective political implications. Employing multinomial logistic regression analysis on 285 instances, this study establishes that factors such as economic underperformance, pervasive corruption, party polarization, and surging populism significantly enhance the likelihood of technocratic government inception. Subsequent in-depth case analyses further reveal that the public's aspiration for efficient governance and the intrinsic paradoxes of party democracy contribute to the phenomenon of technocratic populism. This study underscores the potential discord between technocratic government and representative democracy, emphasizing the need for a more profound exploration and deliberation on efficacious governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy theories gained considerable attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although studies have extensively explored their (mostly) negative impacts on various political and social aspects, like participation, health-related behavior, and violence, their influence on support for democracy remains relatively unexplored. The few existing studies offer conflicting findings, prompting my focus to shift from assessing generic support for democracy to examining preferences for alternative decision-making models. To address some limitations of prior research on alternative models of decision-making, I combine a trade-off item with a ranking methodology: respondents were prompted to indicate their first and second preferences for different democratic and non-democratic models over representative democracy. The study is based on data from a representative survey in Germany (July/August 2022; N=2,536). My findings confirm that the belief in conspiracy theories is positively associated with a preference for direct democratic decision-making. However, conspiracy believers also favor expert-based decision-making over elected politicians--but direct democracy would be their primary choice. Although the evidence for a preference for autocracy over representative democracy is associated with a higher degree of uncertainty, it does suggest that conspiracy believers tend to favor "anything but" representative democracy. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on the impact of conspiracy beliefs on democratic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market-oriented political participation, often referred to as political consumerism, is one of the most rapidly proliferating modes of citizen participation in the Western world. Argued to circumvent the political sphere, this rising mode of engagement has caused scholars to consider the relationship between political consumerism and the functioning of representative democracy. So far, however, the implications of market-oriented participation for the role of elected representatives have been widely overlooked. Drawing from the theory of responsibilisation, I consider whether political consumerism, by circumventing the traditional political arena, risk challenging the role of representatives as responsible actors within the confines of representative democracy. Resorting to a mixed-method approach, using data from the online panel of Swedish politicians, as well as interview material with Swedish MPs, this article investigates representatives' attitudes to political consumerism and finds a considerable support among the elected, with the greatest approval among representatives to the left. But when considered in relation to representative democracy, political consumerism is argued to challenge its core functions, including the responsibility and accountability assigned to representatives. Together the results accentuate a strong reliance on market-oriented participation among representatives in Sweden, but also a recognition of potential democratic perils related to the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how income inequality among individuals in each country and trade costs depicting geographic distance between countries impact economic welfare and regime choice under representative democracy, comparing three trading regimes: most favored nation, customs union, and free trade agreement. We examine two cases: one in which trade costs are incurred symmetrically among all countries, and the other in which no trade costs are incurred among the potential member countries, but only between them and nonmembers. In each case, we identify the political feasibility of each regime as well as the impact on the average welfare levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to capture, represent, and materialize public interest in urban planning has gone through multiple rounds of experimentation, crystallizing a number of regulatory regimes of planning in different historical and political-economic contexts. However, how to define the "public" and capture the public interest in urban planning remains problematic in both planning practices and democratic theory. Therefore, drawing upon Dewey and Habermas's view of the public sphere, this paper introduces a scale perspective to examine the subjects in planning and the power framing process in defining the public in urban regeneration policymaking. First, this paper revisits the current debates on the concept of public interest and identifies three interpretations of public interest materialization: utilitarian, unitary, and communicative. Second, this paper illustrates the institutionalization process of public interest in China's urban planning system. We critically examine the evolving mechanisms of public representation in China's urban regeneration policymaking since 1949. The institutionalization of public interest in China shows distinguished trajectories from the Western countries. These differences are caused by different values that define the scale of "public" in different socio-political contexts. Given the emerging communicative turn in China, we found a hybrid norm of public interest as reflected in the recent "co-production" model of urban regeneration. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1) highlights the validity of the public interest concept by introducing a scale sensitivity to analyze the subjects in planning; 2) complements public interest typology by identifying a hybrid norm in China that weaves between unitary and communicative interpretations; 3) revisits Dewey's democratization theory by conceptualizing the institutionalization of public interest in semi-authoritarian China that is determined across the scales of subjects in planning, the ever-changing political-economic contexts, and the planning application in established rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work aims to analyze the impacts on political parties (and on democracy itself) of the ban on coalitions in proportional elections stipulated in Brazilian legislation through Constitutional Amendment 97/2017. To this end, it examines some of the most significant issues related to the subject, notably: the relationship between democracy, representativeness and parties; the majoritarian and proportional systems; and the trend towards fewer parties. In methodological terms, it relies mainly on bibliographic research. In the final part of the article, it is also supported by a quantitative survey of data provided by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), with the aim of presenting a concrete example of an election. It is anticipated that, in addition to the barrier clause, the ban on coalitions could result in the elimination of smaller parties, compromising the logic of the representative system and the constitutional guarantee of multi-partyism and representativeness. The results show that there is a risk that the reduction in the number of parties will not succeed, and that the participation of parties representing minorities will be strangled, maintaining the presence of larger groups, less ideologically committed parties. The conclusion is that the reform introduced by the constitutional amendment needs to be further developed if the aim is to invest effectively against the reproduction of parties that are not committed to representativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article discusses scientific research in relation to the norms of representative democracy, arguing that politicians are committed to base their policy on scientific evidence. It is argued that people have both natural interests and social interests and that our natural interests, which we have acquired through natural selection and adaptation, are best taken care of by a representative democracy in which science proliferates. The article also argues why politicians and the public should trust science as the best means to fulfil our natural interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most countries in the world have a democratic system of government. Debates on representative democracy and public trust have continued for decades. Today, people's faith in representative democracy is waning. Thus, the main objective of this study is to examine people's trust in representative democracy in Batticaloa district. It also aims to explore the reasons for the decline in trust in representative democracy. This study is based on primary and secondary data. A questionnaire method consisting of interviews and structured questions was also used to collect the first-level responses. According to the analysis carried out, the study revealed that the people's confidence in representative democracy is low in Batticaloa district. The economy and the failure of representative democracy have been found to be the main factors behind low public confidence in representative democracy. Increased corruption, non-conduct of elections, non-election of the president through new elections, family rule, abuse of power, majoritarianism, flawed government policies, weakness of the government structure have been found to be the reasons for the decrease in people's confidence. This study highlights the many challenges that representative democracy has faced, and their causes, and solutions. As such, this study emphasizes that people's trust in representative democracy can be established when mechanisms such as government transparency, establishing political trust, holding elections in a timely manner, promoting direct democratic strategies, establishing government accountability, and providing opportunities for people and civil society to participate in political activities are implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising life expectancies and low birth rates across the Western world have heralded a profound change in the way representative democracy operates. Whereas representative democracy was politics for the young made by the old in the past, it is turning into politics for the old made by the old in the 21st century. Following Yosuke Buchmeier and Gabriele Vogt's recent reflection on Japan's status as the democracy with the oldest electorate, this article considers the case of Germany's aging electoral democracy, using the 2021 federal election as its empirical foundation. Employing what Ian Shapiro labels a problematizing redescription, the paper demonstrates that a recharacterization of gerontocratic rule as political adultism better explains the election outcome than a characterization of gerontocratic rule as such. In doing so, it draws up an original conception of political adultism as the socially-accepted interpersonal, structural, and institutional discrimination of young and younger people in politics and distinguishes between two temporal phases as disenfranchised and enfranchised political adultism. The two-stage idea of political adultism gives voice to the structural injustice toward young people as political beings and facilitates a critical reflection on whether the policy of lowering the voting age to 16 would really be as desirable as many of its proponents believe it is. The unique contribution of this article is the formulation of a new social structure that diagnoses a distinctive experiential bias in democratic politics at a time in which the relationship between demography and democracy is coming to a head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Today, several social movements in western democracies argue that traditional representative democracy has failed to adequately represent the will of the "people", and instead support direct democracy as the only political system to restore the will of the majority. We analyze under what conditions the policy – a vector of decisions on every issue – implemented by the winner of a bipartisan electoral competition coincides with the policy that citizens would choose by means of direct democracy. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for this equivalence to hold, implying that, as long as at least one of them is not fulfilled, a divergence of outcomes between direct and representative democracy arises. The first condition requires that the outcome of majority voting issue-by-issue is the Condorcet winner relative to the voters' preference profile over the set of policies. The second requires that either that outcome is the preferred policy for at least one of the candidates, or that candidates' preferred policies differ on every single issue. We reinterpret some findings in the literature in the light of our model and present them as potential reasons why the equivalence between direct and representative democracy may fail. • We find necessary and sufficient conditions for the coincidence of policies implemented under direct and representative democracy. • Loosely divided electorates and highly polarized politicians favor such a coincidence. • The bundling of issues by politicians does not jeopardize the coincidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional is the property of Centro de Estudios Politicos y Constitucionales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The research of representative democracy under martial law is extremely relevant, especially in contemporary times when many countries face military conflicts and threats to national security. Notably, the military aggression of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine has significantly altered the agenda in Ukraine regarding elections. In wartime, there arises a need for swift decision-making, which can lead to temporary limitations on democratic procedures. Analyzing this issue will help find a balance between effective crisis management and preserving the core of the democratic order. The purpose of this study is to examine the functioning of representative democracy under martial law, particularly how democratic institutions and processes are preserved and adapted during a crisis period. The research methodology includes empirical, comparative, and logical methods. The study examines the functioning of representative democracy under martial law. It explores the peculiarities of the operation of democratic institutions and government bodies during wartime, including the role of parliament, the president, and the judiciary. Changes in legislation aimed at ensuring state security and stability, as well as mechanisms for protecting citizens' rights and freedoms, are analyzed. Special attention is paid to balancing national security and adherence to democratic principles. Potential risks to democracy under prolonged martial law and possible ways to minimize them are also considered. Conclusions are drawn that, despite existing restrictions, it is essential to ensure these restrictions are proportional and temporary, while maintaining oversight by civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anuario del Instituto de Historia Argentina is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to criticize the elitist/aristocratic theory of political representation, according to which representation is designed to balance people's participation with the rule of an expert elite. However, an internal and an external criticism of this theory can be respectively developed that revolve around the notion of "lay expertise". Indeed, the article clarifies that this elitist theory goes hand in hand with a top-down understanding of expertise itself. This connection erroneously reinforces the opposition which is unjustifiably drawn between inclusion and expertise, closing the door to the culturally embedded inputs that lay-experts can provide (internal criticism). Moreover, the analysis shows that the elitist theory erroneously ignores a set of political dynamics defining political representation, thus reducing representation to an exclusionary device (external criticism). Lay expertise shows that representation has a wider political potential which, crucially, enables the possibility to mediate between different kinds of knowledge and interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently in Brazil, some politicians and organised groups have aimed to increase representation and legitimacy in legislatures via 'collective mandates', a democratic innovation (DI) that allows a group of citizens to collectively campaign and, if elected, share decision-making of a legislative seat. This article maps and analyses collective mandates implemented in Brazil from 1994 to 2022 to find their differences and similarities. This study identified 643 candidacies; 56 of them were elected for legislative mandates in city councils, state legislatures, and the National Congress. The qualitative analysis focused on six benchmark cases using the following analytical dimensions: initiative, group size, eligibility, moment of access, decision-making process, and interaction mechanism. The data sources were two nationwide reports on the theme (until 2020), raw data from the 2022 elections, and information available about the mandates on their websites, blogs, and social media. In conclusion, despite being generally labelled as 'collective mandates', the ongoing experiences have produced at least two subtypes: pure collective mandates and shared mandates. The common denominator holds the innovative concept: a legislator shares their power with a group of citizens, giving up parliamentary autonomy to foment democratic participation and accountability in the mandate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) establishes a link between political dissatisfaction and support for DMPs. However, little is known about the sources of political dissatisfaction that trigger this support. Our research tackles this specific question and claims that citizen dissatisfaction is rooted in a position of 'losers of representative democracy', which leads citizens to be more open to reforms that move away from the representative model. Building on the literature on loser's consent, we focus on the effect of voting for a party not associated with the government and of descriptive and substantive (under)-representation in support of DMPs. We rely on a comparative survey conducted across fifteen Western European countries. Supporters of opposition parties and those who are badly represented, both descriptively and substantively, are more supportive of DMPs. These findings have important implications for understanding the public appeal for deliberative democracy instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to initiate a conversation about the democratic quality of co-creation. There is growing interest in co-creation as a tool for mobilizing societal resources, enhancing creative problem-solving, and building broad-based ownership for public solutions. While researchers have focused on the contribution of co-creation to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public governance, few researchers have discussed the democratic quality of co-creation. This lacuna is filled by exploring the democratic contribution of co-creation through a comparison with well-known forms of democracy. The claim is that the democratic quality of co-creation lies in its ability to empower lay actors to take part in cross-boundary collaboration that may lead to creative problem-solving and to the exercise of a shared power based on joint agreements about innovative public value outcomes. The article is mainly theoretical and engaged in prospective analysis but also draws on empirical examples to illustrate the theoretical points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy theories gained considerable attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although studies have extensively explored their (mostly) negative impacts on various political and social aspects, like participation, health-related behavior, and violence, their influence on support for democracy remains relatively unexplored. The few existing studies offer conflicting findings, prompting my focus to shift from assessing generic support for democracy to examining preferences for alternative decision-making models. To address some limitations of prior research on alternative models of decision-making, I combine a trade-off item with a ranking methodology: respondents were prompted to indicate their first and second preferences for different democratic and non-democratic models over representative democracy. The study is based on data from a representative survey in Germany (July/August 2022; N = 2,536). My findings confirm that the belief in conspiracy theories is positively associated with a preference for direct democratic decision-making. However, conspiracy believers also favor expert-based decision-making over elected politicians—but direct democracy would be their primary choice. Although the evidence for a preference for autocracy over representative democracy is associated with a higher degree of uncertainty, it does suggest that conspiracy believers tend to favor “anything but” representative democracy. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on the impact of conspiracy beliefs on democratic systems.

I contend that parliamentary representative democracy betrays what must be democratic about democratic citizenship – its directness. I examine this betrayal to consider what makes democratic citizenship democratic, what is direct about direct democracy, and how it may provide a means to (re)democratize democracy. To do so, I engage the conundrums about citizenship Aristotle posed in the Politics. For millennia, theorists have used Aristotle’s dislike of democracy and related misrepresentations to dismiss direct democracy as impossible for large states. Moreover, the problems he raised have roiled political theory ever since because they established two issues that indicate how profoundly democracy troubles citizenship. The first concerns what it means for “the people” to remain sovereign even when most delegate the political powers of their citizenship to others. The second concerns the historical capacity of democracy to transform the political by disrupting entrenched power and legalized inequality. If so, democracy must somehow institutionalize disruption as a resource to keep it vigorous. I examine how the provocations of sovereignty, equality, and disruption democratize citizenship. These problems are unresolvable in a democracy. Their tensions are necessary to mobilize democratization, as Athenian democracy shows. Attempts to resolve them – such as republican representative democracy – destroy its energies.

El artículo analizó la Sentencia de la causa No. 159-2023-TCE expedida por Tribunal Contencioso Electoral [TCE] y el impacto que generó en el sistema de la participación y representación política de Ecuador, haciendo hincapié en la eficacia de las normas y principios que rigen al sistema de la participación y representación política, bajo la perspectiva de paridad de género entre hombres y mujeres. En ese sentido, se denotó la importancia de la paridad de género y la igualdad de condiciones en una sociedad democrática. Así, se concluyó que la Sentencia de la causa No. 159-2023-TCE expedida por TCE -en el marco de varios recursos subjetivos contenciosos electorales- marcó un hito histórico y tuvo un impacto significativo en el sistema de la participación y representación política de Ecuador; puesto que, garantizó una participación y representación paritaria de mujeres y hombres, en igualdad de condiciones, lo cual, coadyuvó a la consolidación de una democracia representativa y participativa en el país, permitiendo que los ciudadanos pudieran participar activamente en la toma de decisiones, la gestión del gobierno y sus acciones, donde existió una participación colectiva e individual de los ciudadanos, tanto de hombres y de mujeres.

Este ensayo abordó la cuestión fundamental de si la representación política es compatible con los principios democráticos, considerando que el demos no toma decisiones directamente. La tesis central argumentó que la representación política era genuinamente democrática al permitir la expresión de los intereses de la ciudadanía a través de sus representantes. Se inició con dos premisas: la necesidad de reflejar los intereses de la ciudadanía en instituciones y las limitaciones de la democracia directa en sociedades modernas. Estas premisas respaldaron la idea de que la representación política podía efectivamente representar los intereses del demos, desafiando la noción de que sólo la democracia directa lo lograba. La importancia del voto como mecanismo de representación ciudadana se abordó como la tercera premisa, siendo el punto de convergencia entre las dos anteriores. El aporte académico radicó en profundizar en aspectos cruciales de la democracia, explorando cómo los sistemas representativos están en sintonía con los valores democráticos y cómo el voto desempeñaba un rol crucial en ello. Esta investigación enriqueció el debate sobre la relación entre representación política y democracia, estableciendo bases sólidas para futuros análisis y reflexiones en este campo.

This study aims to analyse participatory tools developed in Central and Eastern Europe, in order to understand their potential impact on strengthening citizen participation in the decision-making process, and in countering the widespread lack of trust in public authorities.

The article analyses the development of representative democracy in Croatia from its independence to today. During the 1990s, Croatia changed its electoral system several times and had a bicameral parliament. With the constitutional changes implemented in 2001, the legislative power was organized on a unicameral principle. At the same time, the previous semi-presidential system was replaced by a parliamentary one. These changes represent only the basic framework within which representative democracy in Croatia developed over time. An important milestone in this development was the introduction of preferential voting at the national elections in 2015, which allowed the voters to vote for a particular list and a specific candidate on that list. According to some, this improved the problematic state of inner-party democracy, although, for others, the reform was not far-reaching enough. Given that representative democracy does not function in a vacuum, the article also considers the impact of direct democracy on the functioning of representative democracy in Croatia. Referring to the Croatian experience, it argues that this complementary form of democracy had a positive impact on the quality of representative democracy in the country. Nevertheless, in the face of representative democracy in Croatia, many open questions still need to be addressed. The most important one is how to increase the turnout in the elections, which is still comparatively low and arguably related to the low trust in politics.

According to Aristotle, democracy and oligarchy are empirically the most widespread and analytically fundamental 'constitutions'. I analyse how in different places in his Aristotle 'positively' defines and differentiates between democracy and oligarchy. At the same time, I substantiate in detail a new interpretation of Aristotle's view that significantly differs from the current interpretation. 'Combining' the elements, procedures, and principles of democracy and oligarchy gives rise to mixed 'constitutions', a special place among which is occupied by the politeia or republic, which is the best regime 'for most states and for most people'. I show the ways in which it is possible, according to Aristotle, to form such a regime. Carl Schmitt and, later somewhat differently, Bernard Manin draw a link between Aristotle's mixed regime and the representative democracies of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short piece discusses Hélène Landemore's proposal of an 'open democracy', as outlined in her recent book Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Acknowledging the value of Landemore's radical and ambitious proposals, I draw attention to a number of shortcomings and blind spots that have to do with how the case for an 'open democracy' is made: through an unduly brief and dismissive treatment of political parties; a methodological insensitivity to empirical variations of democratic performance and citizens' evaluations of the latter; a failure to distinguish between higher and ordinary law-making in the discussion of the central Icelandic case; and, finally, a surprising concession that realising an open democracy is all but infeasible in established constitutional democracies. If open democracy is to be an attractive ideal, these issues must arguably be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transformations of technology in the last two decades, especially those related to privacy, based on the digital rights perspective. It debates how the concept of privacy is grounded on the distinction between public and private, a spatial metaphor no longer applicable in the face of the ubiquity of information and communication technologies. Hence, there is a premise stating the personal is increasingly more political nowadays, due to the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism. To anchor the theoretical debate in an empirically informed discussion, the work analyzes discourses about digital rights used in the main sessions of the Internet Governance Forum. The goal is to map the main Forum controversies about digital rights and their relation with contemporary democracies. Using a combined methodology based on both quantitative and qualitative data from the main sessions of the event, the analysis starts from a survey of the recurrence keywords related to the research; privacy, rights, surveillance, and freedom. From these results, a qualitative analysis of the discourses mobilized in these activities is conducted. The outcomes of the empirical analysis are then discussed from examples of technology regulation in the United States and the European Union. Among the main conclusions of the work, the emphasis lies on the need for transparency and accountability of the artificial intelligence algorithms. Related Articles: Glen, Carol M. 2021. "Norm Entrepreneurship in Global Cybersecurity." Politics & Policy 49(5): 1121–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12430. Robles, Pedro, and Daniel J. Mallinson. 2023. "Catching Up with AI: Pushing Toward a Cohesive Governance Framework." Politics & Policy 51(3): 355–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12529. Zeng, Jinghan, Tim Stevens, and Yaru Chen. 2017. "China's Solution to Global Cyber Governance: Unpacking the Domestic Discourse of 'Internet Sovereignty.'" Politics & Policy 45(3): 432–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12202. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent climate activism has played a key role in denouncing the unsustainability of representative democracy. Previous research has investigated the attitudes of climate activists towards representative institutions along the conceptual distinction between 'environmental' and 'ecological' democracy. Yet, little attention has been paid to climate activists' critique of capitalism and how it relates to demands for democratic reform. Our paper addresses this gap by conducting a mixed-method analysis of protest survey data collected in Belgium in 2019. Our findings show that activists display low levels of trust towards representative institutions, but still abide by the ideals of environmental democracy within the boundaries of existing institutions. At the same time, we observe a widespread critique of capitalism, signaling attraction towards the ideals of ecological democracy. Overall, our findings challenge the binary distinction between environmental versus ecological democracy, and raises normative questions about the role of environmental social movements in economic and democratic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This article argues that, due to its characteristics, the republican citizenship model is the best alternative for promoting citizen participation in contemporary Western democracies. Objective: The purpose of the text is to analyze its advantages over other citizenship models, as well as to explain the reasons why it is considered the most appropriate approach for the theoretical and practical development of citizen participation. Method: For the elaboration of the article, the documentary research method and the argumentative analysis were used. First, the debate between the visions of representative democracy and participatory democracy is presented, to later examine the influence of the realist and idealist paradigms as political philosophical currents that underlie and sustain the main premises of each of these perspectives of democracy. Results: From the analysis, it is concluded that the republican citizenship model allows overcoming the representation-participation dichotomy, in addition to providing a more solid and congruent foundation for both the theory and the praxis of citizen involvement in public affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Annales UMCS, Sectio K (Politologia) is the property of Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)