The article discusses the impasses and alternatives to political representation, taking as starting point the controversy about the concept of power, which occurred in the sixties and seventies in the Anglo-Saxon political science and involved, notably, Robert Dahl, Bachrach & Baratz, and Steven Lukes. According to Lukes, the understanding of power must consider three dimensions: (1) the aptness to take decisions or to veto them; (2) the control over the agenda, that is, the determination of the questions that will be object of decisions; and (3) the aptness to nullify social conflict, by preventing individuals and social groups from taking consciousness of their true interests. Despite its problems, this formula is useful to think political representation. Predominant theories take only the most evident face of political representation into account: the choice of decision-makers. But a representative democracy closer to the ideal of popular sovereignty would have to include a second dimension the formation of agenda, what is strongly influenced by mass media. Hence, it is necessary to understand mass media as also a sphere of political representation. And recognition of the third dimension implies the need of generating spaces where subaltern groups can autonomously formulate their interests, that is, a developed and plural civil society.
Political representation; Democracy; Public agenda; Mass media; Civil society