Abstract

PEREYRA, Guillermo. The New Institutionalism and the Representationalist Concept of Politics. Perf. latinoam. [online]. 2009, vol.17, n.33, pp.115-138. ISSN 0188-7653.

The main objective of this paper is to offer a critique of the representationalist assumptions of some of the neoinstitutionalist studies. Two fundamental theses are upheld: 1) the institutionalist model of democracy's critique of the notion of popular sovereignty does not take into consideration that the people is a political category which shows the constituitive failure of any representation; 2) the New Institutionalism theory, and in particular from its historical-sociological perspective, is based on the representationalist assumption that there is something previous to politics in society, and culture that must be faithfully represented by the institutions to avoid disorder.

Keywords : new institutionalism; representationalism; procedural democracy; the people; institutional instability; path dependence.

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