El nuevo institucionalismo y la concepción representacionalista de la política

Abstract

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.