Democratic theorists have paid increasing attention to problems of political representation over the past two decades. Interest is driven by (a) a political landscape within which electoral representation now competes with new and informal kinds of representation; (b) interest in the fairness of electoral representation, particularly for minorities and women; (c) a renewed focus on political judgment within democratic theory; and (d ) a new appreciation that participation and representation are complementary forms of citizenship. We review recent innovations within democratic theory, focusing especially on problems of fairness, constituency definition, deliberative political judgment, and new, nonelectoral forms of representation.

Este trabalho é uma síntese do primeiro capítulo do meu livro Democracia Representativa: Princípios e Genealogia (Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy), que será publicado pela University of Chicago Press. Para auxiliar o leitor, irei esboçar os argumentos principais do livro.Na obra, investigo as condições que tornam a representação democrática um modo de participação política que possa ativar uma variedade de formas de controle e supervisão dos cidadãos. Argumento que a democracia representativa é uma forma de governo original, que não é idênti-ca à democracia eleitoral. Ao invés de usar uma estratégia polêmica, procuro iluminar as suposições não questionadas quanto à proximidade e presença física que apóiam a idéia de que a democracia direta é sempre a forma política mais democrática, e a representação, um recurso ou uma alternativa second best. Valho-me dos trabalhos seminais de Hanna Pitkin e Bernard Manin para demonstrar que a represen-

Populism is the name of a global phenomenon whose definitional precariousness is proverbial. It resists generalizations and makes scholars of politics comparativist by necessity, as its language and content are imbued with the political culture of the society in which it arises. A rich body of socio-historical analyses allows us to situate populism within the global phenomenon called democracy, as its ideological core is nourished by the two main entities—the nation and the people—that have fleshed out popular sovereignty in the age of democratization. Populism consists in a transmutation of the democratic principles of the majority and the people in a way that is meant to celebrate one subset of the people as opposed to another, through a leader embodying it and an audience legitimizing it. This may make populism collide with constitutional democracy, even if its main tenets are embedded in the democratic universe of meanings and language. In this article, I illustrate the context-based character of populism and how its cyclical appearances reflect the forms of representative government. I review the main contemporary interpretations of the concept and argue that some basic agreement now exists on populism's rhetorical character and its strategy for achieving power in democratic societies. Finally, I sketch the main characteristics of populism in power and explain how it tends to transform the fundamentals of democracy: the people and the majority, elections, and representation.

Populism is one of those phenomena that serve to highlight significant political differences between Europe and America. The term 'populism' was coined in America at the end of the last century to designate both a political language and a form of political participation particular to and consistent with the democratic process. The extension of this meaning to European societies without any specification can be misleading, however. In the first part of this paper I will try to explain why.Yet populism is more than a historically contingent phenomenon. Populism pertains to the very interpretation of democracy. In the second part of the paper I will try to argue that both the character and the practice of populism underline, and more or less consciously derive from, a vision of democracy that can become deeply inimical to political liberty insofar as it defers the political dialectics among citizens and groups, revokes the mediation of political institutions, and maintains an organic notion of the body politic. The ideology of populism displaces equality for unity and thus opposes social and political pluralism. Its extreme consequence, as the experience of fascism testifies, is to transform a political community into a corporate household-like entity, where class and ideological differences are denied and mastered in the attempt to fulfill the myth of a comprehensive totality of state and society. Hence, in spite of its vociferous antagonism against the existing political order, populism has a deeply statist vocation; it is impatient with government by discussion because it longs for limitless decisionism. I. Nature and ArtificeWith respect to the American experience, one can probably speak both of "good" and "bad" populism. Emerson clarified this distinction in an interesting way, when he wrote "March without the people, and you march into the night." 1 Along this line of thought, the historians Gordon Wood, Harry S. Stout and Alain Heimert interpreted the Great Revival of the mid-eighteenth century as the first example of American democratic populism, a "new form of mass communication" thanks to which "people were encouraged -even commanded -to speak out." 2 According to Heimert, the Great Revival was the first prominent democratic and populist challenge to elitism. Jonathan Edwards's followers, for example, translated the abstract language of both liberal and republican intellectuals into their own language, one made up of religious symbols and biblical allegories. 3

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