In order to better understand the world-wide crisis of political representation, a conceptual analysis of the concept is important. Stepping back from the “deceptive familiarity of words”, and resisting the temptation to define the essence of representation, the talk takes the conceptual history into account and proposes a comparative view going beyond traditional Western narratives. It proposes to distinguish several ideal-types of representation. Three main pairs are proposed: symbolic representation vs. juridical-political representation; making an absent present again vs. exhibition of a presence; mandated representation vs. embodiment-based representation. The aim should be to help analyzing the developments of political representation beyond elections and to assess their democratic or non-democratic dimensions.

Yves Sintomer is Senior fellow at the French University Institute (IUF), professor of political science at Paris 8 University, and presently Senior Visiting Democracy Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School. He has or has held academic positions at a number of institutions: University College London, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Bask country, Harvard, Tsinghua (Beijing), Goethe (Frankfurt/Main), Complutense (Madrid), Louvain-la-Neuve, Catania, and Humboldt (Berlin) universities; Science Po Paris, Science Po Lille, Academia Sinica (Taipei). He has been deputy director of the Marc Bloch Center (Berlin). His writings have been published in 18 languages, and include Participatory Budgeting in Europe; Democracy and Public Governance (with C. Herzberg and A. Röcke), Ashgate, London, 2016. He is presently finishing a book on the future of democracy (to be published by La Découverte, Paris, September 2017) and leading a research on the changes of political representation in a comparative perspective (Brazil/China/France/Germany/India).

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