Models of democracy in a <i>age of transitions</i>

Abstract

The article gathers perspectives concerning the contemporary democracy, its challenges and possibilities , of four important tied authors, in its specifics, from the called critical theory. Ellen Wood, Jürgen Habermas, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Claus Offe are called for the task to elucidate the polysemic democracy concept, to express the phenomenon crisis itself that searchs to nominate, therefore, the ideas of representation and participation, of the relations between the politics and economics, or the relationship between the market and citizenship. The four authors above indicate the inextricable limits in making the representative liberal model democratic and display distinct, complementary or exactly antagonistic diagnostic and prognostics that we try to systemize. The announced theoretical matrices had allowed us the reconstruction of democracy models: the radical democracy of Wood in her hard censure of capitalism as the organizer of modern life in society; the procedural or deliberacionist democracy of Habermas that sights to be the synthesis of the liberal and the republican models without the vices thereof; the participative democracy of Sousa Santos and its bets in a new social contract to rebuild the State; the remodelled liberal and representative democracy by Offe in the times of disorganized capitalism post-welfare. The debate around these proposals of democracy, finally, suggests tracks in the renegotiation of the democracy in post-national contexts. Key words: Democracy; Representation; Participation; State and market.