Pluralistic democracy, political parties and representation

Abstract

As the representative link is an essential factor for the legitimation of the exercise of democratic power, all the processes that constrain the expression of the electoral will raise doubts on the value of the legitimative function. The recent developments occurred in the conditions of political action, increasingly complex, create a new problematic context for the question of representation and, thus, create new tensions and difficulties for the stability of democratic legitimation. The problem has been analysed taking into account the function of political parties and the role of elections in modern democratic societies, with a reference to the Portuguese political evolution, clarifying the non-intuitive notions that political parties are structures that organize the possibilities of representation (rather than being the result of the representative link with its origin in the electorate's will) and that elections are opportunities for ratifying strategies that are conceived in anticipation of the electoral results (rather than being opportunities for the implementation of original political initiatives as a consequence of the interpretation of the electoral outcome).