ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter states the need to recognize that representativeness—and this is my main argument—is far from being univocal. Its different meanings within the Brazilian political debate, in its intellectual and academic versions, express a dispute between different views of civil society, of participation and even of wider conceptions of democracy itself. This dispute between different political projects pervades both civil society and the state, in their mutually constitutive relationships. Such a dispute cannot be understood without reference to the historical context in which it takes place, and I begin by briefly presenting it.
