ABSTRACT
To announce a crisis of representation is not surprising in democratic theory. But in the present circumstances it has surpassed the academic discussion to become the main subject matter in the public sphere, fuelling the birth of successful new populist parties and social movements and raising new hopes for the therapeutic effects of citizen participation. The embodiment of the representative system has always been a controversial issue. Its main component is the relation established between citizens and those elected to form part of a collective assembly, notwithstanding that in democratic systems there are other forms of political representation. Good-enough citizens are those who "would posses sufficiently strong incentives to gain a modicum of knowledge of their own interests and of the political choices most likely to advance them, as well as sufficiently strong incentives to act on behalf of these choices".
