FORMS OF DIRECT PARTICIPATION AND REPRESENTATIVE
DEMOCRACY IN NORBERTO BOBBIO
Approximations; Complements; Democracy; Direct; Representative.
The purpose of this Research Project is to analyze, in the work of Norberto Bobbio, the
concepts of direct democracy and representative democracy, in addition to the
intermediate forms between these modes of political organization, as a response to the
unfulfilled promises of democracy. To this end, we intend to explain how the
philosopher and jurist starts from a minimum concept of democracy as a non-
authoritarian regime and as a set of rules of the game. In the work “Il futuro della
democrazia” (1984), the Italian thinker substantiates the characteristics of representative
democracy, presenting the problems that this system engenders in the form of
unfulfilled promises, notably, the birth of the pluralist society, the representation of
interests and the permanence of oligarchies in power. Furthermore, the author not only
explains his conception of direct democracy, but also identifies its main institutes: the
Citizens' Assembly and the referendum. However, Bobbio understands that between the
two extreme forms of democracy there is a “continuum” of intermediate forms, and as
they are not watertight concepts, a series of contours occur in practice, configuring two
systems that can integrate reciprocally. In this context, based on the author's
conceptions of democracy, we intend to achieve elements of rapprochement and
complementation between direct and representative democracy.