Abstract

WOLDENBERG, José. Approaches and Refunds: A Tensioned Democracy. Rev. mex. cienc. polít. soc [online]. 2013, vol.58, n.217, pp.99-114. ISSN 0185-1918.

Based on the conception of democratic aspiration as hegemonic, the author argues that democracy and its reproduction are doomed to exist in a constant tension. Anchored on a critical review of the ideas of Pierre Rosanvallon, Colin Crouch, Klaus Von Andreas Schedler and Klaus Von Beyme, the author analyzes the particular configuration of this form of government and the challenges it must confront, both those that are inherent to its design and those that are derived from its development in contemporary societies and political systems. Thus, democracy is approached from different conceptual perspectives, although favoring the one that views it as a political-institutional arrangement enabling coexistence and competition of/within political diversity. In turn, and taking as referents the UNDP and ECLAC diagnoses, the author analyzes the specificity of democracy in Latin America, its structural weaknesses and the possibility of building a new social pact in order to provide an answer to the prevailing breakdown of social cohesion and exclusion.

Keywords : counter-democracy; post-democracy; anti-politics; social cohesion; incomplete citizenship.